


Bricks and Roads and Magic, Oh My

by Phlinting



Series: Loki Loves Movie Night [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Loki Does What He Wants, M/M, Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One Compliant, We're in the Movie?, Wizard of Oz References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-31 19:51:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 24,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6485311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phlinting/pseuds/Phlinting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is trying, he really is, but the Earth's Mightiest Heroes really are a dull lot. Perhaps he needs to get more creative in delivering his message of goodwill. He is the god of mischief after all…</p><p>Or the one where Tony wears a dress, Bruce barks, Clint's stuffed, Nat has a rust problem, and Steve has no idea why he's so damn scared. And no one has a clue how they all ended up on the wrong side of a rainbow that's not a damn bridge or why they're all starting to think there's no place like…Avengers Tower?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first trailer for CA:CW nearly broke me, and the ones that followed have been just as heart wrenching. I really don't like it when my heroes fight each other (I can't wait for the movie though!!!) so it got me wondering where it all went wrong for the Avengers in the MCU.
> 
> That thought somehow led to Loki throwing the Avengers into the Wizard of Oz movie. Yeah, I'm as speechless as you are. My brain is a strange and special place some days.
> 
> Anyway, this is the first fanfic I've written and it's unbeta'd, so I'd love some feedback if you've got time.

"Aw, no, no, no, no, no," Clint said, but despite the serious tone the humor was clear in his voice. "Tash, noooooo."

"Get over it, Clint," Natasha said in her usual deadpan tone. "I swapped with Tony, so it's his turn to pick."

Steve smiled as he stood just outside the doorway of the common room and listened to his teammates tease each other. He wasn't even certain how movie night had become a thing that they did together, but it had quickly become his favorite night of the week.

"Oh, man," Clint said, clearly wanting to argue but knowing Tony wasn't going to change his movie choice. "Tony, take pity on a poor archer."

Tony's laugh was audible and delighted. "Problem, Legolas?" he asked in his usual smart-ass tone. "I thought Wizard of Oz would be right up your alley."

"Don't go there," Clint warned, his tone again failing to hide his humor. Steve heard Bruce's quiet chuckle and Thor's sound of curiosity. By now they'd all shared the happier memories of their lives with each other—it was a natural part of bonding as a team—but sooner or later they were going to need to get around to the harder stuff. Steve already knew the raw details of Clint's tragic childhood—and the rest of his teammates' histories—but knowing and understanding were two very different things.

"What's the matter, Katniss?" Tony asked, clearly teasing. "You mean you didn't grow up on a monochromatic farm in the thirties?" Judging by the surprised squawk that followed, Steve was fairly certain Clint had put his "World's Greatest Archer" skills to good use. Tony was still grumbling good-naturedly and rubbing a spot on his forehead when Steve stepped into the room.

"Finally," Tony said, making it sound like they'd been waiting for hours, "Capsicle's here. You can roll the movie now, J."

JARVIS complied silently as Steve settled into his usual position on the floor in front of one of the custom-made sofas. There was plenty of room for him to join the rest of his teammates, but there was just something very restful about sitting at Tony's feet. Steve had always chosen not to think too hard on the why of it all, but as the opening credits of the movie flowed into the black-and-white of Dorothy's life, he couldn't help but remember how different life had been before the war.

Of course memories turned to thoughts of Bucky and thoughts of Bucky often brought regrets, and somehow that always brought him right back to the man sitting behind him.

Steve hadn't been brave enough to grasp the life Bucky had once offered him. It had been a different time with different attitudes, but it had been the fear of maybe losing his best friend rather than concern over the laws of the time that had held him back. He'd waited too long and then Bucky had fallen and the man had been lost to him long before Steve had admitted what he'd truly felt.

He didn't want to make the same mistake with Tony, but Steve honestly had no idea where to start or what to say or even how to approach the conversation.

Heck, he didn't even know for sure that Tony was gay, or at least bi or pansexual or whatever other word the modern world had for it. Starting a conversation with "So I hear homosexuality is legal now" probably wasn't his best idea, but so far it was the only one he had.

He glanced at the movie, smiled when he realized Natasha was humming along to the song so softly that even super-soldier hearing strained to hear it, and decided that right now probably wasn't the best time to start that particular conversation anyway.

~*~

As usual Tony was very much aware of the super-soldier at his feet. His fingers itched, urging him to lean forward and glide them through that perfect hair and muss it just a bit, to make Captain America a little less wholesome-looking, a little more bad boy, a little more…Tony's.

Admittedly he wanted to do way more than just touch his hair, but since he wasn't practiced at all with the casual-touching thing, anything he did would probably seem strange. Especially coupled with the reputation Tony had. Yeah, he was the king of one-night stands. He was good at the sex part. It was intimacy he had no experience with.

And with Steve he wanted more than a single night of happy orgasms—much, much more—but he had no idea how to ask for it.

How exactly did one approach a man "out of time" about the possibility of a same-sex relationship?

He glanced at the TV screen and grimaced. Yeah, a forlorn young woman singing about hopes and wishes that were unlikely to come true on her side of the rainbow was quite the fitting tribute to his problems right now.

~*~

Loki rolled his eyes. Pathetic mortals. Their longings and desires were so easy to read, so ridiculous in their simplicity, so tiny compared to the world around them.

But it was also the very thing that might save them.

He concentrated, the idea for his spell forming effortlessly in his mind, the magic needed to create it merely a thought away.

Not bothering to contain his glee, Loki let his invisibility spell drop, took a seat on the now empty sofa, grabbed the popcorn bowl before it could drop to the floor, and then sat back to watch the show.

He didn't even flinch when he heard Thor's tired words come from the sofa beside his.

"Brother, what have you done now?"


	2. Chapter 2

The world was spinning.

Yeah, this was part of the movie, but even with the massive TV screen he'd had installed in the common room specifically for movie night, it shouldn't feel this real.

Fuck, even the wind was burning his face, and the wild spiraling was doing nothing to keep the small amount of popcorn he'd eaten where it belonged. His hands flexed, instinctively trying to use the flight stabilizers of the suit he wasn't actually wearing to somehow right the world he suddenly found himself in. 

Wooden floor, wooden window, cow floating past said window… It seemed pretty obvious that he wasn't in Avengers Tower anymore. All he needed was for Toto to leap into his arms to make the scene complete. 

He nearly dropped the stupid dog when it did just that. Dog. Check. Evil cackle outside the window. Check. Green Scottish terrier. Che… Wait a minute! Green? When the hell did tiny dogs start coming in green?

"Brucie?" Tony asked cautiously, trying really hard to ignore the continued spinning while he gazed into the familiar green eyes. "Um…Hulk?"

The dog barked once, its annoyance quite clear despite the sound being lost in the cacophony of other noises. Of course one sound did manage to be heard over all the others.

A laugh. And that laugh was fucking familiar. Tony glanced out the window just in time to see Loki's grin before he pedaled away… He actually fucking pedaled a fucking bike in the middle of a fucking hurricane. What the fuck?

"JARVIS?" Tony asked, straining to hear anything over the roar of the wind. He didn't really expect an answer, but getting none was still disappointing. He realized the moment the house started to free fall, gravity taking over where the hurricane left off. Tony rolled into a ball, curling around the little green dog that seemed to be Bruce, or maybe the Hulk, and prayed for a fucking miracle.

~*~

Well, he got his miracle.

Almost.

Just like the movie version, the house somehow managed to defy basic physics and crashed down onto solid ground without smashing into a bazillion bits or injuring the man and dog inside. Cautiously Tony uncurled his body, absently running through a quick self-diagnostic of his…well, his human parts since he wasn't actually wearing the suit, diagnosed himself as uninjured but freaked-the-fuck-out, and then slowly moved toward the window.

He barely registered the little dog still in his arms until it jumped down and started growling at the door in a voice very much like the Hulk's.

"Brucie?" Tony asked, hoping that if the dog wasn't actually Bruce and was really just a dog painted green for Loki's amusement, that the real Bruce wouldn't take offense. 

He leaned over and opened the door, squinting as the vibrant colors flared brighter the way colors used to do on old TV sets. The dog bolted through the doorway and sprinted around the corner. 

Still a little discombobulated from his ridiculous transport to a place that seemed to be somewhere over a fucking rainbow, Tony was a little slower to follow. Hoping like hell that doggy-Bruce somehow also contained the Hulk, Tony nevertheless pushed himself to move faster as he followed the low growling noise to where Bruce was chewing on the toe of a black, knee-high combat boot. 

Shit.

It had been a very long time since Tony had watched the movie, but he was pretty sure the witch's shoes had been red and well…shoes, not combat boots. And they'd been the key to getting home.

Tony was contemplating the very embarrassing idea of clicking his heels together three times just to be sure it was actually the shoes and not just the action or the words that made this all a dream so he could go back to his normal life when a translucent bubble appeared in the distance and quickly grew closer.

Hey, at least he might get some answers now.

~*~

Talk about bursting his bubbles! 

Inside was not the pretty witch who'd given Dorothy well-timed advice, but rather a man Tony had never expected to see again. He was dressed in an expensive three-piece suit, his glassless glasses—apparently worn for affect—perfectly straight on his face, and his shoes shined to a stunning mirror finish. 

Agent Coulson glanced at the house, tilted his head to the side as if checking who was smooshed under the side porch, and then opened his briefcase. Somehow the paperwork he lifted out of the small case was far more than should actually have been inside.

"Form 27.2b – Application to land a house in a suburban area," he said, handing over a wad of paper thick enough to be a damn book and an ornate feather-tipped writing pen that had no space for ink but somehow was supposed to work anyway. 

Coulson gave Tony a look—one of those mild-mannered expressions that had once accompanied a threat to Taze Tony and watch Super Nanny while he drooled into the carpet—and Tony quickly stuck his hand out to accept the form and pen. His usual excuse—he didn't like to be handed stuff (it was a thing, _really_ it was)—absolutely was not going to work on this version of Agent Coulson. 

Resigned to the inevitable, Tony quickly filled in the document and handed it back.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of his red-tape nightmare. And yes, there really was red-tape in that brief case too.

"Form 296.7k – Application to relocate a dwelling," Agent Coulson said as he handed Tony another form. This one was slightly thinner, but not by much. He quickly filled it in and started to wonder if he'd actually made it out of the house alive when two more forms were pushed into his hands. Ugh, paperwork. This sure felt like his version of hell.

"Form 297.4h – Application to rebuild, and Form 297.8b – Application to renovate."

"Um…" Tony said, not wanting to annoy this version of a super spy who was probably just as deadly as he had been when he'd been alive, "aren't they the same thing?" 

In fact, weren't all four forms pretty much identical?

"Form 345.5j – Application to reinvigorate a dwelling."

"Seriously?" Tony snapped before he could get his reaction under control. He tried again. "I mean… SERIOUSLY?" Okay, so that wasn't exactly diplomatic, but… **"SERIOUSLY!!!"**

Where the fuck was all the paperwork coming from and where the hell was it going once Coulson put it back into the empty brief case?

Coulson gave him another of those looks and handed him three more forms. Resigned to his fate, Tony swallowed his protests, dropped to the ground, and filled in form after form after form after form.

"Okay," Coulson said after what felt like several hours worth of a montage, "that's it. Thank you for your co-operation."

"Ah, I think that's Natasha's line," Tony said, foolishly expecting this version of Coulson to get the joke. 

Coulson gave him yet another of those Taze-Drool-Carpet-Nanny looks and then turned his attention back to his brief case. He snapped the locks closed, lifted the leather case in his hand, checked his watch, and then nodded his farewell as a bubble formed around him.

"Wait," Tony called, panicked a little by the idea of being left alone, "do I…um…have any neighbors?"

He'd just relocated a house with a shit-ton of paperwork. Surely the question was a valid one in that respect.

Coulson quirked his eyebrow—which for him was as huge as a smile—and glanced around the area. "You can come out now," he called into the empty air. "He's filed all of the correct paperwork."

Before Tony could ask just who Coulson was talking to, he stepped into his bubble and floated away. 

"Um…hello?" Tony called into the empty air. He nearly leaped out of his skin when a nearby shrub giggled. Wait, this part was in the movie. The little people, the dwarves, the um…munchkins? Was that the politically correct term here? "Hello, I'm…ah…new in town."

"We know," said a droll and very familiar voice. "You landed your mother-fucking house on my mother-fucking lawn and killed the mother-fucking son of a bitch who has been terrorizing us for months."

"Um…" Okay, so the…little person looked like Fury, he even wore the badass, floor-length leather coat, but he was less than three feet tall. "Fury?"

"No, Loki," the man who was apparently not-Fury said matter-of-factly. "The Wicked Loki of the East and his other clones have been causing problems all over the damn place. It's about time someone dropped a damn building on one of them."

"Clones?" Tony asked, deciding to concentrate on the problem at hand and not notice at all how cute Fury looked in miniature. Even the eye patch that gave him such a dangerous air in real life, looked far less intimidating on a guy the size of a four-year-old. 

"Clones," Fury agreed, giving Tony a once-over before dismissing him entirely. 

"Boss," Maria Hill—and how fucking cute was she at three-feet nothing height?—"you forgot about the shoes."

"I lost my one good eye," Fury said, almost sounding like he was whining. Maria gave him a look that could almost rival Coulson's Taze-Drool-Carpet-Nanny one until Fury rolled said eye and huffed in annoyance.

"Fine, give him the damn boots. It's not like they would have fit me anyway."

And with a dramatic flourish, Fury turned on his heel and walked away. He was quickly lost in the gathering of mini SHIELD agents. 

"Agent Hill?" Tony asked, careful not to annoy the beautiful woman in case she really was the deputy director of SHIELD. 

The woman glanced at her clipboard. "World Security Council guidelines state that any magical boots acquired from a Loki clone are to be immediately and forthwith handed to the person responsible for the acquisition of said boots. In this case, that would be you."

Tony glanced down at the boots that were suddenly on his feet. They were a little big and he found himself wondering if Asgardians and humans had the same correlation between shoe size and…okay, yeah, moving along. The last thing he needed to be doing right now was thinking about that part of Loki's anatomy.

Besides, Tony had no doubt that Steve's was better.

"Um…Agent Hill, can you tell me how to get home from here?"

She glanced pointedly at the house and then back at him. "You filed all the paperwork." She looked at the space where the Loki clone had been under the house and then turned back to Tony. "You don't like the neighborhood?"

"No, I mean I do… I do like the neighborhood, and the…ah…neighbors. I was just wondering how to…get back over the other side of the rainbow bridge thingy. Hey is that an Asgardian thing?" he asked, his mind starting to run at normal speed again, finally. "I mean, they call the bi-frost a rainbow bridge, don't they? Is that how I got here?" He glanced around the area that suddenly had far more occupants than only a few moments ago. "Did Heimdall bring me here? Wherever here is. Any chance of him sending me home?"

Agent Hill raised an eyebrow. "All inquiries regarding Asguardians must be directed to the Wizard."

"Okay," Tony said, trying not to wince. He'd already noticed the unusual color and design of the cobblestone pathway so he had a pretty good idea where this conversation was going. "How to I get to see the Wizard."

"Easy," Agent Hill said, somehow unclipping a thick wad of paperwork from her otherwise thin clip board. "Form 3228-p – Application to—"

"Just give me the damn pen."


	3. Chapter 3

Tony should probably be grateful that he got out of town without writer's cramp or the miniature SHIELD agents singing a lollipop song, but it was still disconcerting to be in an unknown area without at least part of the Iron Man suit with him.

He stared down at the little green dog that he somehow kept ending up carrying and figured that at least he wasn't alone. He could even ramble to the pooch and nobody would look twice at him. Not that there was anyone around to look at him or listen.

Of course it was that very moment that he looked up and saw a suspiciously familiar scarecrow propped against a wooden support.

"Fuck," Tony whispered under his breath. He had no idea what Loki's game was, but having to collect traveling companions the same way Dorothy did in the movie was cruel and unusual punishment.

The dog barked and wriggled to get down. After a moment of indecision, Tony finally let him leap from his arms. "Fine, but if it starts singing about needing a brain, I'm setting the damn thing on fire right now."

"F–F–F–F–Fire?" the scarecrow asked worriedly, somehow far closer to the road than he'd been only a moment ago. Bruce was bouncing around barking joyously as if he'd found a long lost friend.

"There's no fire, bud," Tony said in as reassuring a tone as he could muster. "I'm just, you know, talking out loud."

"Oh," the scarecrow said, "I wish I could do that."

"Do what?" Tony asked, moving closer when the inflection of the words seemed to confirm his theory.

"Talk," the scarecrow said as if that were obvious. "I'd like to talk, but since I don't have a brain, I can't."

"But you're talking now," Tony said. "Moving too."

"Am I?" the scarecrow asked in Clint's unmistakable smart-ass tone. "Am I really talking right now?"

"Clint, what the fuck?" Tony asked, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "Why are you out here pretending to be a scarecrow?"

"Pretending?" he asked, his strange cloth-like face looking confused. "Who's pretending?" He glanced down at the gap between buttons and pushed his entire gloved hand straight into his apparently real, made-of-straw belly.

"I assure you," Coulson said from right beside Tony, scaring the fuck out of him, "that he is a real scarecrow." He turned his attention to not-quite-Clint and gave him a warm smile. "Hi, honey."

"Hi, babe," the scarecrow said, moving closer and wrapping his floppy arms around Coulson even though they were separated by a barbed-wire fence. "Missed you."

"Missed you too," not-Coulson said to not-Clint in a way that reminded Tony of an old married couple. "What's this I hear about you not having a brain?" Somehow the tone managed to be both affectionate and chastising.

"Phil," not-Clint said in soft tone, "you were always the brains in our marriage."

"Marriage?" Tony exclaimed almost silently. They both ignored him. 

"I handled the paperwork," Coulson said quietly, "but that doesn't mean you couldn't have done it without me. I bet you've been doing all of your own paperwork since I died."

The words seemed to hit not-Clint (real-Clint, maybe?) like he'd been shot. Tony just stood there dumbly with his mouth open wide enough to catch flies.

"Phil, is it really you?" Clint asked, taking a step back and staring at the man in front of him. "Fuck, if I'm dreaming, please don't wake me up."

"You're not dreaming," Phil said in a tone of voice that Tony had never imagined coming from the super-serious spy's mouth. "By the time Fury resurrected me—"

"Fury resurrected you?" Clint asked in a furious, low-pitched tone. "What the fuck, Phil?" Clint ran his hands over his cloth scarecrow head the same way real-Clint did in the real world. "You've been alive all this time?"

"Sort of," Coulson admitted. "I spent months in recovery. Months more in therapy. By the time they let me back to work you were… You'd moved on. You'd joined the Avengers and you had a good life. I didn't want to ruin that for you."

"You're alive and you know where I live?" Clint asked incredulously.

Coulson nodded, looking perhaps a little guilty.

"When we get out of here," Clint said, sounding angrier than Tony had ever known the archer to be, "when we get back to our real lives you are coming to find me. You are coming to the tower and you're going to explain and—" He cut off his words, his jaw snapping shut, obviously reluctant to say what else he'd been going to say.

"And we'll talk and I'll explain," Coulson said, "and then I'll beg you to forgive me."

They seemed to be the words Clint needed to hear because he easily leaped the wire fence, gathered Coulson in his embrace, and held on for dear life. "Fuck, I missed you, Phil," Clint said, his voice sounding totally wreaked. 

"Um…guys," Tony said cautiously, "not that I want to ruin the moment or anything, but…I'm assuming you're actually your real selves now, so…ah…any ideas on how we can get out of here?"

Clint gave Tony a withering look, but Phil did take a step back and seemed to consider the matter seriously. He didn't actually let go of Clint's hand though. He absently rubbed his thumb over Clint's glove-covered, straw knuckles as he spoke.

"I suspect the others are around here as well, so we should probably try to find them first." Coulson gave Tony an assessing look. "Any ideas on who the Tin Man might be?"

"Huh?" Tony asked, confused. He was the Tin Man…well, he was Iron Man so in any good "Wizard of Oz" scenario he should be the Tin Man. Except that hey, he wasn't. He glanced down at the blue and white checkered dress he hadn't noticed he was wearing. "I'm Dorothy?"

Okay, so the squawked question wasn't exactly manly, but since he was standing in the middle of a fake-looking forest wearing a fucking dress, it was probably appropriate.

Clint snorted and then laughed softly when Coulson smacked the back of his head lightly. Coulson didn't bother to answer Tony's question, but he added, "And Clint is the Scarecrow and Bruce is Toto and I'm"—he glanced down at his three-piece suit and smiled wider than Tony had ever seen him smile—"I'm apparently the good witch without the puffy dress."

"That's just…" Tony said, ready to rant about the unfairness of him being the only one in a dress before he decided that there were more important things to deal with. "Okay, let's consider this logically. How did you get here?" 

Clint shrugged. 

"I needed to deliver the paperwork for the emancipation of a scarecrow from the farmer who created him." Coulson actually rolled his eyes as he said the next part. "Form 629.4b." He glanced down at the brief case he held in his hand and frowned.

"I was always here," Clint said. He glanced at Coulson. "At least that's what I thought until Coulson arrived and I remembered who he is and who I am and…how fucking angry I am at him right now." His soft voice and even softer expression didn't match the tone of his words. It was very clear that he was happy to have his husband back.

Husband. Wow, the things some people managed to hide.

It was only then that Tony finally understood the extent of Clint's struggle over the past year. Everyone had simply believed the sleeplessness and PTSD had been the result of the way Loki had taken over his mind and used him to attack the helicarrier, but it was obvious now that Clint had been dealing with a loss even more devastating. No wonder Coulson had gone after Loki himself. 

"I feel like I need to give you a hug," Tony said to both of them, not actually explaining his thought process. "Can I? Is that something teammates can do without it getting weird? I mean—"

Coulson cut off his rambling monologue in the most expedient way possible—by dragging him into a three-way hug. "You should have told us," Tony said to Clint a few moments later when they finally stepped apart.

Clint shrugged as if dealing alone with the loss of his husband had been no big deal. Coulson looked stricken by the revelation. "I should have known," he whispered quietly. "Did you at least tell Natasha?"

"She knew we were close," Clint said, blushing slightly. "I kind of wanted to keep the rest for myself, you know."

Coulson hugged the scarecrow close and buried his face against the straw-covered part of Clint's neck. Damn that had to be itchy. Tony wanted to sneeze just watching.

Finally growing uncomfortable with the unusual and very unexpected emotional reaction of two of SHIELD's finest, Tony cleared his throat and glanced around the area. "Well, I guess if we're going to find the others, we need to let the story play out."

"Yeah," Clint said, nodding in agreement. "That makes sense."

"We'll find Tasha and Steve," Coulson said, "and then double back for Fury, Maria and the other agents."

"Okay, then we're off to see—" Clint slapped a straw hand over Tony's mouth. 

"Don't say it," Coulson said, his tone back to his usual deadpan, "the last thing we need is you bursting into song."

"Hey," Tony said, pretending to be affronted. "I have a great singing voice."

"Trust me," Clint said, grinning now the way he usually did when he was teasing Thor or playing post-fight acrobatic games with the Hulk, "you really, _really_ don't."

Tony smirked, glad to have their friendships back on familiar ground.


	4. Chapter 4

"I really hope that's not Steve in there," Tony said as they cautiously moved closer to the immobile form of the Tin Man. He didn't need to explain to either Coulson or Clint how being frozen in place would affect Steve. They'd all had plenty of time to contemplate the psychological effect of being trapped under ice for seventy plus years.

"Too thin to be Steve," Coulson said confidently, moving closer. "My guess is that's Natasha."

"How can you be so sure?" Tony asked.

Coulson quirked an eyebrow and dropped his gaze to the green dog currently hugging the Tin Man's…er, Tin Woman's leg.

"Brucie, no," Tony said urgently, diving for the little dog. "We don't do that sort of thing in public." And sure as fuck not to the deadliest assassin either of them had ever met. Shit. If the Black Widow wasn't currently rusted into place, chances were good that tiny doggy-Bruce would be getting an unexpected flying lesson when she kicked him into next week.

"Got it," Clint said, holding up the oil can that they'd all known wouldn't be too far away. "Okay, Tasha, try to remember I'm doing this out of necessity and that there's no need to murder me once you can move."

The Tin…Woman mumbled something and Clint reluctantly moved to pour oil onto her lips. Natasha pouted and worked her mouth and jaw for a moment before thanking Clint for his help. They were all a little startled when she began explaining how the rain had rusted her in place when she'd come out to chop some wood.

"Tasha," Clint asked, "don't you recognize us?"

Tin Woman tilted her head to the side and gave Clint a quizzical look. "You do seem familiar." Her voice had a strangely mechanical tone. "Oh, yes," she said suddenly, "you're the scarecrow I passed on my way here."

"Um…" Clint said, turning to Coulson and Tony in a silent plea for help. 

They both shrugged at the same time.

Clint rolled his eyes and then continued to pour oil into all of Natasha's joints until she was able to move her limbs. When he was finished she leaned in close and they all held their breath. Clint was still a scarecrow, still made of straw so chances were if Natasha got all stabby he wouldn't be hurt, but it was still an unnerving move from the deadly Black Widow.

"Why is that man wearing a dress?" she asked in a voice not quiet enough to stay private. "Also, I think I still have rust in my ears."

Tin Woman—there was no way that person was Natasha right now—tilted her upper body and waited patiently for Clint to pour oil into the holes in the side of her head. He obliged and then took a step back, placing himself in front of both Coulson and Tony in an obvious attempt to protect them should Natasha do something unexpected.

"Oh," she cooed in a voice none of them had ever heard from her, "what a cute little dog. Can I hold him?"

"Ah…" Tony said, instinctively turning to Coulson for advice. Clint smiled and Coulson nodded sagely. "Okay…ah…sure." He whispered "Behave" into Bruce's cute doggy ears before handing him over.

Of course, since Bruce wasn't really thinking like Bruce at the moment he completely ignored Tony's instructions and wriggled like mad and licked Natasha's lips the moment he got close enough.

"Ew," Tin Woman said, extending her arms so that the wriggling, squirming dog was held far away from her face. "What is it doing? Doesn't it know I can rust?"

"He's just showing affection," Coulson said in a warm tone.

The Tin Woman tilted her head to the side. "I don't understand affection," she said. "I don't have a heart."

"That's not true, Tasha," Clint said, his tone soft and pleading. "You care about your friends. You care deeply for us all, but Bruce is the man you love."

"Love is for children," she said, the words casual and remote, but certainly a sentiment Black Widow had expressed before.

"No, Tash. I've watched you with Bruce. You love him as much as I love Coulson."

"Coulson?" she said, quickly turning her gaze in the man's direction. "Fury told us you were dead."

"Yeah," Coulson said with a shrug. "I was dead for a few days"—he actually smiled that smile again that was kind of freaking Tony out—"but it didn't take."

Natasha's lips quirked into that small but genuine smile she wore when she was truly happy. "You always said dying meant too much paperwork." She turned her attention back to the dog still wriggling in her arms. "Green is a terrible color for a dog. You in there Bruce?"

The dog stopped wriggling, glanced around the area as if he'd just woken up, and then turned his wide, startled gaze back to the woman holding him at arm's length. "Tasha?"

Tony tried not to shiver in reaction. Words coming out of a dog's mouth were as freaky as he'd imagined they would be.

"Yeah, Bruce, it's me," Natasha said, her tone and voice very clearly now that of Natasha Romanov and not the Tin Woman or the Black Widow.

"Is Clint right?"

"That it's really me?"

"No, Natasha," Bruce said, somehow making his doggy paws twist together the same way his humans ones did when he was concerned. "That you love me?"

"Love is for children," she repeated, but this time she glanced away as if the words were a lie.

"Tasha," Bruce said, wriggling his tiny doggy body, "look at me, please."

"Bruce," Natasha said in her customary deadpan tone, "you're currently a tiny green dog."

"And," he said without missing a beat, "so in love with you that I can barely think straight."

Even though she didn't return the words, it was pretty clear by the expression on her silver, Tin Woman face that she felt the same way. "What are you smirking at, Barton," she said without even looking at the archer. She glared at them all even as she moved Bruce closer to her tin chest.

"Hey, it's been a good day," Clint defended in a happy voice. "My best friend finally admitted she's in love, her new beau returns the sentiment, and my husband returned from the dead. I'd say, so far, it's been a really good day."

Tony nodded in agreement as his mind again took off in that full-on, fast-forward, speed-of-lightning way he enjoyed so damn much. "Secrets!" he exclaimed when he reached his conclusion. "It's all been about secrets."

"Explain," Natasha said in her deadliest tone.

Tony took a tiny step back—hey, safety first when it came to his favorite assassin—and tried to put into words everything that had just flown through his head.

"Coulson's not dead. He's married to Clint. Natasha loves Bruce. Bruce loves Natasha." He turned in a circle, talking into the air, and warming to the idea. "He's exposing our secrets, making us face them, forcing us to deal with them."

"Who is?" Clint asked, his straw-stuffed face looking far harder than a scarecrow should be able to look.

"Loki," Coulson supplied, hugging his husband just a little tighter. Clint looked like he was going to be sick. 

"If this is all a fucking joke and you're really still dead," Clint said, his voice breaking as he forced the words past clenched teeth, "there isn't a universe big enough to hide that fucking prick."

"It's not a prank," Coulson said, touching the tips of his fingers to Clint's cheek. "I really am alive and I'm still working for SHIELD. I have a team and a really cool airplane and I promise I will come to you the moment we get out of here."

Reassured, at least for the moment, Clint turned his gaze to Tony. "So I guess that just leaves you and Steve," he said very seriously. "You finally gonna man up and tell the super soldier how you feel?" 

Tony didn't have to think about it much. He should have found the courage to say something a long time ago. He nodded. "Assuming, that is, if we can find the cowardly lion."

~*~

Loki could feel Thor's gaze on him. He shifted uncomfortably, wishing that Stark had said none of that out loud. He'd had no doubt that the genius would understand what was happening, but he hadn't quite been ready for Thor to hear it.

Yeah, it was a stupid sibling-rivalry thing, but it was how their dysfunctional family worked. They'd been raised by Odin and his A+ parenting, for fuck's sake. None of their behavior after that should have been a surprise to anyone.

"You're setting things right," Thor said, smiling like the big dumb oaf that he was. "You're fixing the things that you destroyed in the Chitauri invasion."

That was probably giving him too much credit. Yeah, the Chitauri invasion hadn't actually been his idea and he'd done everything he could to dismantle their plans from the inside before too many people had been hurt, but it had been a very delicate balancing act. At the time he'd counted the human deaths as necessary losses. He just hadn't realized the value humans placed on each and every mortal life.

Loki had sat beside Barton's bed for the first few nights, invisible to the mortal's eyes, but not immune to his pain. And Loki had listened and he'd realized and he'd regretted every death, but it had been the agent he'd speared himself that had caused him the most grief. He'd been overjoyed to realize the man was alive—even if he didn't quite understand how—but couldn't explain why Agent Coulson hadn't returned to the man who'd loved him dearly.

"Thank you, brother," Thor said, wrapping his arms around Loki and pulling him into an awkward hug. "I always knew you were a good man."

Loki rolled his eyes and fought his way out of the big man's embrace. "You give me far too much credit, brother. I'm merely having fun."

Thor grinned, shook his head as if he didn't believe a word, and then settled back onto the sofa, this time beside Loki.

Loki allowed it.

Just this once.


	5. Chapter 5

He couldn't stop shaking. He wasn't sure where he was or what he'd been doing, but something had spooked him, some noise or unexpected movement. He'd panicked and run to wherever he was now and had crawled inside to hide.

After many minutes of violent shivering, he finally managed to start calming down. He forced himself to concentrate, controlling his breaths in and out, the exercise somehow weirdly familiar though he couldn't remember why. It took ages to finally relax enough to get his bearings, but even then it took another minute of not-quite whimpering and even more talking to himself before he could leave his safe space.

The weirdest part was that being scared didn't feel normal. Not normal at all.

He was a lion. He glanced down to make sure. Yep, a big strong lion with big strong paws and big strong legs and big stro…Hey, look at that. He had a tail.

No, he wasn't spinning in a circle to catch it. He was…cleaning it. Yeah, that's right, he was trying to clean it…with his tongue…because…eww…. Did he really clean himself by licking his fur? That sounded really gross.

A sound caught his attention, but it wasn't close, wasn't enough to make him forget that he was a big strong lion. His swiveled his ears in that direction. How freaking cool was that? His ears swiveled. They actually swiveled. And wasn't that a weird word. Swiveled. Swiv… Swivvy… Swivvidy... Such a great word.

He startled again at the soft noises.

There were voices, at least three maybe four, and they were coming this way. He could be ready for them. He could remember that he was a big strong lion and he could jump out and scare them and not be a coward. He could do this. Yes, he totally could. He had this covered.

Any moment now. Any…moment…now….

He wriggled his hips, dancing on his back paws as he readied himself to pounce. Only a few more feet and he could jump out and scare whoever was coming and then he'd remember that he was a big strong lion who didn't need to find any courage at all.

Nope, no courage required at all.

~*~

"Holy fuck!" Tony exclaimed when a strangely shaped, overly hairy lion with a red bow in the top of his mane leaped onto the path only a few feet in front of them. He didn't even mean to lash out, but after a year of being an Avenger and even more time being Iron Man before that, the defensive move was kind of instinctive.

What he didn't expect was for the lion to place his two front paws over his nose and give Tony a wounded, betrayed look.

"Steve?"

"You hit me? Why did you hit me?" the lion wailed in a voice too muffled to sound anything like Steve's Captain America tone. "You can't just go around hitting people!"

"Dude, you're a lion," Clint added, very unhelpfully. 

"Lions are people too you know."

"Actually, they—" Bruce started to say, but quickly shut his tiny little mouth when Tony turned to glare at him.

"I know, Cap," Tony said slowly. "I didn't mean to hit you. It was a reflex thing. I can fix it." It wasn't exactly his smoothest line—hey, being Dorothy was a lot of fucking pressure, in case you were wondering—but it was the best he could come up with under the circumstances. "I'll kiss it better for you. Would that be okay?"

Clint snorted and Tony saw out of the corner of his eye Coulson move to place a hand over his husband's mouth before he could say anything stupid. Yeah, having Coulson around the tower was definitely going to be a good thing.

"Kiss it better?" lion-Steve asked in a suspicious voice. "How would kissing it make it better?"

Another snort came from behind him, but this one had a far more feminine tone. Geez, everyone was a fucking critic. Tony half turned to glare at Natasha, finally remembered that she was made of tin and he was wearing a dress, and instead turned back to face Steve to deal with the matter at hand. 

"I'll be gentle," Tony promised inanely, moving a tiny bit closer to the lion who was still holding his nose.

"Fine," the lion finally said gruffly, "but if you try to bite me…"

"I won't," Tony said, moving closer.

The lion finally dropped his paws and let Tony see his nose. There had never really been any doubt that this was Steve, but it was good to recognize Captain America's face. Tony leaned in and kissed lion-Steve's nose softly a couple of times before slowly moving lower and pressing their lips together.

After a moment of sheer terror that this wasn't going to work, Tony was suddenly crushed in strong arms when Steve dragged him closer, deepening the kiss, and turning something innocent into something far more filthy. 

Oh wow

And, oh fucking hell, yeah. 

By the time Steve lifted away, Tony was the one who was shaking, but it was Steve's bewildered expression that quickly brought him back to this reality.

"Tony?" Steve asked.

"Yeah, it's me, Cap."

"Why are you wearing a dress?"

"That's the first question you want to ask?" Tony asked incredulously. He glanced around the area, indicating the others with a tilt of his head. "You're a lion, Nat's a tin woman, Clint's a scarecrow, Bruce is a tiny green dog, Coulson's not dead, and your first question is 'Why am I wearing a dress?'"

Steve actually gave him a smart-ass grin and hauled Tony back into his arms. "I've been wondering for a long while if you might like to go on a date with me. Now I'm just trying to figure out what I should wear."

Tony melted just a little. "Really?" he asked, old insecurities attacking at exactly the wrong time. "You've thought about the two of us dating?"

Steve raised his eyebrows and gave him that serious expression, before leaning closer. "I've thought about a lot more than that," he whispered into Tony's ear. 

Yeah, okay, time to throttle that line of thought. Now was neither the time nor the place to pop a boner. Thank fuck he was wearing a dress.

And hey, there's a thought Tony Stark had never thought he might have.

"Come on," he said, reaching for Steve's hand and turning back the way they'd come. "We'll return to the town, collect Fury, Hill, and the rest of the SHIELD personnel, and then find a way to get the hell out of Dodge."

"Okay," Steve said, taking more interest in his surroundings and moving into Captain America mode as if he wasn't still sporting a tail. "Let's get this done."


	6. Chapter 6

Steve's mind was still spinning by the time they made it back to where Tony said he'd spoken to Director Fury and Agent Maria Hill. 

Tony had literally held his hand—well, his paw since he was still a strange lion-like creature—the entire walk back. He'd imagined countless scenarios with Tony as his boyfriend, both erotically sexy and sweetly intimate, and he could honestly say he'd never come up with this one.

Bricks and roads and magic, oh my!

"And you're certain that Thor is immune to Loki's magic?" Steve asked Clint one more time. His teammate raised an eyebrow and Steve shook his head. He already knew Clint was sure. The archer was often sarcastic and teasing and a prankster when things were quiet and he was bored, but he'd never exaggerated or claimed to know any more than he did. If Clint said Thor was immune to Loki's magic because his mother had cast a protection spell over him after the last time Loki had turned him into a giant frog, then that was information Steve could rely on.

"Okay," Tony said, pointing at the people dancing and apparently celebrating in the town square, "time to figure out how to get our collective asses out of here."

It wasn't until they got closer that Steve realized just how small the people and dwellings actually were. 

Clint was the first one to break. His laugh was ridiculously contagious and Steve struggled not to join in. 

"Can we…leave him…like this?" Clint asked, breathlessly between intense bursts of snickering. 

Steve shook his head, but couldn't help considering the slightly malicious thought. He still owed Fury for that stunt he'd pulled when Steve had first woken from the ice. If Fury had been successful in convincing Steve that he was still in his own time, who knew how long the director of SHIELD would have kept him hidden away?

Considering the long list of scientists who'd tried to recreate Erskine's formula in the years since the doctor's murder, Fury's motives were unlikely to have been as pure as he'd explained.

"So how do we shake Fury and Hill out from under Loki's spell?" Tony asked.

Steve turned to Coulson, smiling slightly when he realized it was everyone else's first instinct too. He may have only known the man a short time before he'd died on the hellicarrier, but the stories he'd heard from Clint and Natasha since had left him wishing he'd tried harder to get past Coulson's weird fanboy moment on the transport. _I watched you while you were sleeping…_ Yeah, it hadn't been the best way for the super-efficient, highly respected, ruthlessly dangerous Agent Coulson to introduce himself.

Steve was really glad that he'd now get a chance to know the man better. Judging by the way Clint and Coulson had stayed wrapped up in each other's arms, Steve wasn't the only one happy about it.

Of course, thinking about Coulson coming back from the dead reminded Steve that Fury had still been keeping secrets. Maybe they could let karma take its course just this once. And yes, he did realize how un-Captain America that thought was.

He was still human after all.

"The rest of us broke the personality side of the spell by facing our fears," Coulson said. "Clint remembered that he really is an intelligent man, that he does have a brain, and Tasha learned that loving someone doesn't make her weak." Natasha gave Coulson a soft smile, and surprisingly didn't seem at all embarrassed that the super spy knew her so well. 

"And I," Bruce said, his doggy lips twisting into what Steve figured was meant to be a wry smile, "realized that the hulk is a part of me and that both of my…personalities can agree on some things—especially when it comes to Natasha."

Everyone turned their gazes to Steve.

He shrugged. "I guess I remembered to be as brave in my personal life as I try to be in the field." Tony squeezed his paw reassuringly. Steve looked down into beautiful brown eyes and almost forgot the question he wanted to ask. "Um…how about you, Tony? How did you remember who you are?"

"I never forgot," he said offhandedly, his gaze already flicking around as he assessed the area. "Arrived in the house, landed on a Loki clone, got the shoes." He glanced down at his feet. "Well, the combat boots. Maybe it's time to try the whole 'no place like home' thing."

Steve was torn between breaking the personality side of the spell for Fury, Hill, and the rest of the SHIELD agents first, or just getting everyone back home and dealing with the rest when they got there. Maybe once they were out of the movie, things would revert by themselves. If the Avengers had to deal with everyone it was going to take a whole lot of time that they might not have. Some agents Steve hadn't even met, so he wasn't even sure they were SHIELD agents or what their triggers might be to regain their memories.

He'd barely thought the damn words when the screaming started.

"I have had it with these mother-fucking monkeys in my mother-fucking town."

"Language!" Steve growled at miniature-Fury. Tony smirked when Steve blushed, finally remembering that people spoke like that these days even in mixed company.

Thankfully, Tony didn't have time to say anything out loud because a moment later they were literally ducking to avoid being grabbed by flying monkeys. It may have been the only pop-culture reference Steve had understood on the hellicarrier a year ago, but that didn't mean he wanted to experience a flying-monkey attack for himself.

He was still fervently wishing he had his shield when things got even more chaotic. Almost in one voice the SHIELD agents started screaming "The Winter Soldier" over and over, their terrified screeching and frantic pointing leaving them even more vulnerable. Steve watched helplessly as the monkey with a strange metal arm directed the others to swoop down and petrify the tiny SHIELD agents into literally running in circles. The Winter Soldier monkey seemed to be waiting for a particular target. 

Of course, nobody was surprised when it scooped up Fury.

~*~

"So I guess we need to go rescue our foul-mouthed leader," Tony said, quirking an eyebrow as if not rescuing the Director of SHIELD was actually an option. 

"Is it just me," Clint said, quirking an eyebrow, "or did one of those monkeys look a lot like Rumlow?"

"It's not just you," Coulson said, sounding like his usual self, but somehow Tony knew he was deeply disturbed. "In fact, most of the monkeys looked familiar."

"Well at least the Winter Soldier is a myth," Tony said trying to convince himself that was somehow good news.

"Actually," Natasha said, pointing at a dint on her tin torso, "he's not a myth. He shot right through me to get to his target."

"That wasn't in your reports," Tony said, freaking out a little when Natasha raised an eyebrow and gave him a certain look. He'd seen that "stay out of my stuff" look a lot over the past year, but Tony had never been good at minding his own business. He smirked to hide his real reaction to Natasha's brand of super-scary, secret-spy glare.

SHIELD had secrets, Tony had the ability to hack their systems, and he always felt better knowing where his team members were when they were on a mission.

Of course, he'd be hacking a little harder when he got back home. He hadn't found anything to indicate Coulson was alive and certainly nothing on how he'd recovered from a fatal wound a few days after actually dying.

Obviously there were layers to SHIELD security that even Fury's access codes didn't unlock, so maybe Fury's code, voice prints, hand prints, and eyeball scans weren't the whole of his access. Tony would need to check if the guy had another identity in the system—after all, he wore an eye patch but he technically still had two eyes. 

The munchkins were still screaming and running in circles five minutes after the monkeys flew away, Fury swearing loudly enough to be heard far longer than he'd been in visual range.

"As much as I hate the idea, we need to split up," Steve said. "Bruce and I will do recon. We'll find out where they've taken Fury, assess the situation, and if we're unable to rescue him, return to get your help." He spun on his heel to glare in the direction Fury had been taken and then deliberately switched to using their code names so they'd know they were expected to follow his orders. "Coulson, Widow, I need you to work with the SHIELD agents. They're a liability the way they are. See if you can get at least a few of them back to their right minds. Iron Man and Hawkeye, you're on weapons detail. Find or make whatever you can. Chances are that we're going to need them."

Just like they did when the city was under attack and they were wearing comms, one by one the Avengers verbally acknowledged their understanding. Steve glanced down at the man beside him.

"As pretty as the dress is, do you think there might be some pants in the house you arrived in?"

Tony grinned. "That's why you're the captain, Cap," he said, sloppily saluting before he and Hawkeye turned and ran toward the wooden house. Steve spared only a moment to watch the man he'd grown to love move away before lifting doggy-Bruce into his arms.

"Just so you know, Cap," the little green dog said as he settled comfortably into Steve's embrace, "sneak-n-peeks really aren't part of my skill set. I'm more of the 'smash now?' kind of operative."

Steve laughed softly, grateful for Bruce's ability to distract him from his own brooding. "Well, it's been a day full of surprises," he said, moving quickly now in the direction Fury had been taken. "Maybe we'll get one more."

~*~

Tony refused to think about Steve moving toward danger without his shield. Tony flat out refused to be the type of boyfriend who worried about every little fight. This was their lives. They protected people. It was what they did. They were the Earth's mightiest heroes. 

And he was Tony _Fucking_ Stark and he'd find a way to hide how much it disturbed him that the people he called his family were always in danger. He'd struggle to get up in the morning if he lost any of them, but he'd want to lie down and die if he lost Steve. Especially now when it seemed they were on the verge of something truly amazing together.

Ruthlessly Tony pushed away the thoughts crowding his head and shouldered open the door to the house that had "flown" him here.

The inside was still monochromatic, but it contained clothes and several other handy items—one of which was an unloaded small-caliber rifle. Tony stepped back out of the bedroom door and held the gun up for Clint to see. He grinned and reached for it.

"Hopefully there's ammunition stored in here somewhere."

Clint winked, walked into the small kitchen, and opened a couple of cupboard doors before whooping his delight.

"How?" Tony asked.

"Same place my dad used to put 'em," he said. 

Tony couldn't decide if storing bullets in the kitchen cupboard was clever or kind of disturbing, but like all things confusing at the moment, he brushed the thought aside and concentrated on collecting anything that could be used as a weapon.

Hopefully Steve and Bruce would be back soon and they'd at least have an idea of what they were up against.

~*~

The asset-monkey followed his orders with ruthless efficiency, despite the confusion of his thoughts. He was only supposed to think about his mission, but the lion on the bridge had seemed familiar. He didn't understand why.

Grinding his back teeth together, the asset-monkey held back the question he wanted to ask. He knew better than to let the men who controlled him know that unnecessary thoughts and vague memories polluted his mind. He was their asset, their weapon. He wasn't required to think. He would convince himself to concentrate on the mission and avoid being forced into the chair that cleared his mind but left him screaming.

He dropped the squawking, foul-mouthed, one-eyed munchkin at his handler's feet, lowered his gaze to the floor, and then stepped back to await new orders.


	7. Chapter 7

"It's definitely the right place," Bruce whispered when he came back from _sniffing around._ And Steve was never, ever going to admit he'd just had that thought. The Hulk would probably make him into red, white, and blue paste if he thought Steve was making fun of Bruce in his half-dog, half-Bruce, Hulk-colored form. It was natural for the big guy to be very protective of the scientist, and he'd proven on more than one occasion that he didn't appreciate jokes if he thought someone was making fun of him or Bruce.

Since getting smashed by Hulk wasn't on his list of fun things to do, Steve turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

"You saw Fury?" Steve asked.

"Not saw," Bruce said, his lips pulling back to show his doggy teeth. "Heard. I had no idea the director had such a foul mouth, but it sure made it easy to find him."

"Are we going to be able to get him out? Or do we need backup?"

"We definitely need backup," Bruce said in a tone that was more forceful than his usual quiet objection. He gave Steve a concerned look. "I think we're dealing with Hydra."

"H–Hydra?" Steve asked incredulously. Those assholes were still around?

"That's not the worst of it, Cap," Bruce said, his front paws moving restlessly as if he wanted to wring them the way he usually did when he was human. "We weren't wrong about the identity of the others. I'm not familiar with too many SHIELD agents but there are definitely more than a few in there that I recognize, Agent Rumlow and his strike team included." Bruce glanced around them, obviously on edge. "And we have no idea if Loki is trying to tell us something important or if he's just fucking with our minds." 

Steve nodded. He wasn't sure what it said about him, but it wasn't that much of a stretch to think of Rumlow as one of the bad guys. SHIELD was full of dangerous people, but Rumlow and his strike team had always seemed just a little too zealous in their enthusiasm to maim and kill. 

"We don't even know if we're really here or hallucinating the whole thing," Bruce continued, sounding more worried with every word.

The thought had occurred to Steve as well. The only thing they knew for certain was that Loki was very powerful and quite capable of killing them all without the song and dance routine. They'd learned from Frigga, Thor and Loki's mother, that Loki hadn't needed the Chitauri to take over the Earth. He could easily have done it without the alien army if that had truly been his intention. Steve still didn't understand Loki's motives for doing what he'd done, but it hadn't been as clear-cut as everyone had assumed. 

It was kind of ironic that it was that fact in particular that seemed to back up Steve's gut feeling that Loki really was trying to show them something important. Of course, Steve would have been much happier just for Loki to have given them the information and skipped the whole brick roads and magic thing.

"We also don't know if dying in here—wherever 'here' is—means we don't get to go home or, if we are still home, if we die there instead," Bruce added. 

He had phrased it carefully to suggest he was talking about the possibility of him and Steve and the rest of the Avengers dying for real while inside a movie, but Steve knew the man well by now. He was also very concerned about hulking out and perhaps killing SHIELD agents Loki had only painted as the bad guys. They had no proof that any of these people were actually working for Hydra.

It was a completely fucked up situation.

"What if we need to rescue these guys as well as Fury?" Bruce asked.

Steve closed his eyes tiredly. When they'd thought they were dealing with an enemy they could fight, things had seemed simple enough. But the situation had just gotten monumentally harder.

"Okay, give me a plan B, Bruce. Can we contain them somehow?"

Bruce looked thoughtful for a few moments. "In the movie," he said, his gaze going unfocused the same way Tony's did when his mind was starting to move at lightning speed, "there's a field of flowers that puts everyone to sleep."

"So we get them to chase us into the fields?"

"Or we bring the fields to them," Bruce said, apparently calculating percentages and possibilities. "You should be immune. You've already proven resistant to every known sedative, so assuming that you've still got the constitution of a super soldier under the lion façade, you should be able to gather enough of the plants to knock out everyone in the building where they're holding Fury."

"Including Fury," Steve said, actually looking forward to the idea. Maybe it was Loki's spell, but for everyone else it had amplified their fears. Chances were that it was the same for miniature, foul-mouthed Fury, which was rather interesting when one considered the BAMF that Fury usually portrayed. 

"Okay, double back, bring everyone here, I'll gather the flowers, and I'll meet you before the next ad break."

"Ad break?" Bruce asked before his mind caught up and his eyes widened in surprise. "Time isn't moving the way it does in real life. By the time we decide where we want to go, we're almost there. The scene cuts to the next one and we don't end up doing the actual travel." Steve was pretty sure if Bruce was human right now, he'd be cleaning his glasses. "That would be rather helpful in real life, especially in an emergency."

Steve nodded, silently agreeing, but mostly glad to have his observation confirmed. It was really very strange not to have to live through the boring bits in between the action, but it also meant there was no down time to recuperate.

"Will you be okay by yourself?" Steve asked, suddenly worried that despite being green that Bruce didn't really have access to his Hulk side. Hulk may have spoken a few words, but that didn't mean he'd be able to grow in size or do his usual smashing.

"Hulk here," Bruce said in Hulk's gruff voice. "Always protect puny Banner."

"Thanks, Hulk," Steve said, willing to trust his teammate's judgment on this one.

Steve watched Bruce turn and run back the way they'd come, marveling somewhat at how fast those tiny little legs could move. And then he turned away and ran toward the field of flowers, confident that no matter what direction he took, he would find himself exactly where he needed to be.

~*~

It felt like Steve and Bruce had only just left when Bruce came running into the area where Tony and Clint were inspecting a few surprisingly dangerous chemicals they'd found in the house. If this was typical of a 1930's farm house, it was a miracle the generation had survived considering the potentially explosive combinations they'd kept under the kitchen sink.

Then again, it was quite possible the bottles had been empty props when the movie had been recorded and Loki's magic had just filled in the details using the original contents of the bottles.

"Where's Cap?" Tony asked when he realized Bruce was alone. It probably shouldn't have been his first observation, but now that they knew how they both felt, Tony was determined that they have time to get to know each other better. Way better.

"Gone to gather sleeping flowers."

"Huh?"

"From the field. We're going to knock everyone out."

Tony glanced at Clint and was relieved to see the man seemed as confused as Tony felt. "Everyone being?"

"Everyone," Bruce said. "The flying monkeys are SHIELD agents as well. They seem to be working for Hydra."

"Fuck," Clint muttered under his breath, "is Steve okay? I can't imagine they're happy memories. Fuck." He turned and kicked the side of a tiny house that turned out to be surprisingly sturdy. Clint grumbled his annoyance and kicked it again for good measure. "The next time Loki gets bored, I really am going to put an arrow through his eye. Torturing Avengers by dredging up ancient history is damn low."

"I'm not so sure it is ancient history," Coulson said as he moved to join them. "Everything so far has been deliberate. It has meaning. Maybe if Loki is telling us we have Hydra hiding in SHIELD, we should be listening to him."

Tony really, really didn't like that idea at all. 

Listening to Loki was a seriously bad idea, but so was ignoring what could very well be their only real warning before something worse happened. 

Clint obviously felt the same way—or maybe he'd just missed his husband in the past five minutes—because he leaned into Coulson's warmth and sighed when the man hugged him close.

"Did you have any luck 'waking' the others?" Bruce asked Coulson.

"Only Maria Hill," Coulson said, nodding in the tiny woman's direction. "Either we don't know the others well enough to break through the spell, or we're not supposed to."

Tony ran a hand down his face and considered that thought. 

"So are they actually here or are they just"—Tony made a rolling motion with his hand as he tried to come up with a suitable word—"movie extras? Stunt doubles? Computer generated crowd scenes?"

"We don't know," Bruce said, "but we can't risk leaving anyone behind."

"Or we could go home and tattle to Frigga," Natasha said with a malicious smile. It was a rather strange expression on a face made of tin.

Clint grinned, his expression very similar to the one he'd worn the day after the Chitauri invasion when Thor had taken Loki home to Asgard as a prisoner. It had been quite a few months more before Thor had returned to offer an explanation for his brother's behavior.

Tony had gotten so caught up in the realization that Loki not only had "daddy" issues but that he was also a bit of a "momma's boy" that he hadn't truly grasped everything that Thor had tried to explain. It was rather hilarious that despite living thousands of years longer than humans, Asgardians still had all the same "human" failings.

The others had turned to Tony, apparently waiting for his input. He shrugged. "We're still not sure how to get home, so getting everyone into the one place shouldn't hurt."

"Hill," Coulson said, moving to take over the logistics of their plan, "get everyone ready to move out. We've got a long walk ahead of us."

"Actually," Bruce said, smiling his toothy, doggy-grin, "Steve noticed something that is going to make this much easier."

~*~

Steve didn't even have to collect the flowers. He'd sprinted in one direction only to suddenly find himself heading back to the castle with his arms laden with baskets full of flowers. He could sense their potency, actually feel his body actively working the continually sedative effects out of his system, but as Bruce had hypothesized, he seemed to be immune to them.

As convenient as a scene in a movie, Steve turned a corner and came face to face with his team and every munchkin SHIELD agent that had been in the town where Tony had landed.

Steve backed up a few steps when he realized the munchkins were already falling asleep. Even Clint and Coulson were yawning widely. Tony backed away quickly, apparently recognizing the danger.

"Okay then," Steve said, taking yet another step back. "I'll just go drop these around the castle. I'll be right back."

Natasha moved to stand beside him and Bruce trotted ahead of them, leading the way. Steve gave them both his best glare, but knew it would be no use arguing. They both had a version of the super soldier serum and they seemed to be immune too, so arguing with them to let him go in without backup was a waste of breath.

He quelled the soft laugh when he realized a lion, a tin woman, and a green dog were about to walk into a castle.

Yeah, that could be the beginning of a really bad joke…


	8. Chapter 8

The asset-monkey stood quietly, his wings folded, his hands tucked against the small of his back, following protocols as he waited for orders.

Handler Rumlow hadn't bothered to address the asset-monkey since he'd returned with the target, but that didn't mean he could relax. No, the asset-monkey was always on duty, even when he was too tired to function at maximum efficiency.

He tried not to show an outward reaction to that wayward thought. The asset-monkey didn't get tired. He rested when his handlers ordered him to and he did not get tired before then.

It was weird though to have that thought just as everyone around him laid down in slow motion and apparently went to sleep.

Following the protocols that had been beaten into him—and he had no idea why he would phrase his lessons that way—the asset-monkey moved closer to his primary handler and took up a defensive stance.

He waited, tense and determined, ready to take action if someone attacked. He didn't have to wait long, but the man who came around the corner was eerily familiar and so was the one word he uttered in complete shock. 

"Bucky."

~*~

If this was a fucking joke, Steve was going to tear Loki into tiny little pieces. He had no idea how, but he'd find a fucking way.

"Buck?" he asked again, his gaze flickering over the familiar and unfamiliar of the flying monkey he'd only seen from a distance before. This close he'd recognize his best friend anywhere.

Steve automatically reached out a hand to hold Natasha back but it was her quiet whisper that had the hair on the back of his neck prickling.

"What did you call him?" Steve asked, not taking his eyes off the flying monkey with a silver arm, the only one apparently immune to the sleeping flowers the way Steve, Natasha, and Bruce were.

Natasha whispered the Russian words again, the monkey twitching even though he shouldn't have been able to hear them. "He's the Winter Soldier," she translated. "He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"But you called him Bucky," Bruce said to Steve, perhaps the only one of them thinking clearly. "Did you mean he looks like your friend James Barnes?" Bruce glanced between Steve and Bucky. 

Steve nodded and shook his head at the same time. "Not looks like. Is," he said, his voice hoarse even as he tried to force himself to be ready for attack. "That's Bucky. I don't know how or why he's here, but that man is my friend."

Bucky watched them with blank eyes, his stance clearly telegraphing his ability and willingness to protect the man sleeping on the floor behind him.

"Buck, do you remember me?"

Bucky smiled and nodded. "Your mother's name was Sarah," he said in a voice soft and gruff from disuse, "and you used to wear newspapers in your shoes."

Bucky seemed as stunned as Steve felt when those words came out of his mouth. His eyes widened in fear and he glanced around the room as if to check that everyone else was still asleep. 

"You shouldn't be here. The wizard will not be pleased."

He seemed to reach for a weapon that wasn't there and Steve watched in stunned silence as the monkey with wings patted himself down looking for weapons as if he was usually heavily armed. If Natasha was right and Bucky was the Winter Soldier, it was probably exactly how he was usually dressed. A shudder worked its way down Steve's spine as he considered the implications.

"How is he still alive?" Steve asked Natasha. Had Bucky been working as a cold-blooded assassin for the past seventy years?

"You rescued him from Zola's experiments," Bruce said, "and he's immune to the flowers, so he probably has a version of the super soldier serum too."

"And cryo-freeze," Bucky added, apparently again shocked by his own words and flinching as if he was expecting to be hit.

"We need to get you out of here, Buck," Steve said, his thought processes sluggish with the fear he felt for his best friend.

"No, we need for him to remember first," Natasha said quickly.

"Coulson theorized," Bruce explained, "that only the people who are meant to remember are going to be capable of it, and if Loki really is trying to help, then Sargent Barnes needs to remember who is before we all go home. 

"But if the Winter Soldier suddenly 'wakes up' in the real world, it might put his life in danger," Steve said, worry gnawing at his gut.

"His life is already in danger," Natasha said, her eyes haunted with memories, probably those of her own upbringing in the Red Room. "At least remembering who he is might give him a chance to escape Hydra and find his way back to you."

"You think this is Hydra?" 

"You don't?" Natasha asked.

"I don't know what to think," Steve admitted. 

Throughout the entire conversation Bucky had simply watched them. He'd taken a defensive stance over the sleeping flying-monkey form of Brock Rumlow and seemed to be waiting for them to make a move.

If Steve had to guess, the Winter Soldier's orders were to protect Rumlow, and since he hadn't been given a direct order to attack them, for the moment they were safe. Well as safe as they could be deep in the belly of Hydra.

Fucking hell. He'd given his life once already to try and stop these assholes. There was no way Bucky was paying the same price.

~*~

The asset-monkey tried to keep the confusion off his face. Maybe this was a test. Maybe they'd realized his mind was polluted with useless memories and were trying to trick him into admitting it. 

_He won't tell them. He won't. He doesn't want to go back into the chair, so he'll hold himself ready, and force himself to be the asset they've made him._

"Bucky," the lion-man said, moving a step closer. 

The asset-monkey dropped into a fighting stance, prepared to protect his current primary handler with his life if necessary. 

_This is his job. It's why he exists. The only reason he's still alive. He will prove to them that he can do his job even with useless memories—strange memories of a blond man much like the lion in front of him—contaminating his mind. They don't need to wipe him again. He can still do his job._

"Steve?" the asset-monkey asked, terror immediately screeching through him when he realized he'd made another mistake. He dropped to his knees, ready to accept the punishment he deserved.

"Yeah, Buck," the lion-man said stepping closer. "It's me."

"I'm sorry," he said, knowing it was useless. He'd be punished and wiped and if he was lucky they'd wipe the memory of the punishment but he'd wake aching and cold and injured enough to barely be able to fulfill his only function.

"Don't be sorry, Buck," the blond man— _no, the lion, who only reminds Bucky—no, reminds the asset—Bucky is not the asset's name—he's not a man, he's a flying monkey—no he's a weapon, not a monkey—fuck, fuck, he's a…he belongs to Hydra—he's a tool, a weapon, he's not Bucky—he's…he's…_

~*~

Steve had no idea how to react when Bucky started to mumble seemingly to himself, his words growing in volume and pitch as panic apparently set in. He caught his unconscious best friend before he could hit the ground, but he was cold and clammy and his heart was galloping faster than what was humanly safe.

"Bruce?" Steve asked urgently.

"I think it's just a panic attack," Bruce said, sounding calm despite his quick movements in doggy form. "He's fighting Loki's spell and what seems to be seventy years worth of brainwashing."

"We need to get him out of here," Steve said, lifting Bucky carefully so that he didn't damage his wings.

"I think we broke the spell," Natasha said, moving faster than Steve expected her tin body could move. "He knows he's a man, not a flying monkey, but I don't think he could reconcile that with the memories he has of you."

"You think he's remembering Steve even though he's been brainwashed by Hydra?" Bruce asked. "That could be very bad for him. You heard what he was saying about 'the chair,' right?"

"Which is why we need to break through the brainwashing while he's in here. If we send him back the way he is now, his handlers will know something is wrong and they will wipe him," Natasha said.

"You say that like you know what it means," Steve accused, too busy freaking out to be polite. If Loki's spell wasn't just his idea of mischievous bullshit, then Steve's best friend was not only alive but had apparently been tortured for the past seventy years by the very people Steve had given his life to try and stop.

When she stayed silent, he glanced at Natasha and really wished he hadn't. The expression on her face said she really did know what "being wiped" actually meant when Bucky said it.

"Okay, new plan." And Steve was getting rather sick of changing plans on the fly and not working with enough information to know what they were dealing with. "Bring the rest of the SHIELD agents into the castle. They'll sleep, so they won't be able to wander off. Hopefully it can buy us some time to help Bucky."

Both Natasha and Bruce nodded their agreement. 

"What about 'the wizard'?" Bruce asked. "We know he exists in this movie. The question is who is he to us?"

"Who's missing?" Steve asked as they ran out the exit of the building and started to head back to the road where they'd left the others.

"I didn't quite do a headcount." Natasha said, her normally stealthy running reduced to a rhythmic clunking sound, "but one person I haven't seen is Alexander Pierce."

"He wasn't with the other WSC members in the munchkin village," Bruce confirmed.

"And he is the most likely candidate to fit the part."

"Wait. Was the wizard good or bad in this story?" Steve asked. He'd only met Alexander Pierce a couple of times, but he'd never warmed to the guy. If anything Steve had placed him in the same mental compartment with Brock Rumlow and his thugs.

Bruce shrugged. "I think he told Dorothy she had to 'deal with' the other evil witch before he would take her home."

Steve raised his eyebrows, fear swirling through him as he desperately tried to remember the movie he'd seen only once.

"Hydra," Bucky whispered, his lips moving to form more words, but no more sound came out.

"You think Alexander Pierce is Hydra?" Steve asked, not sure that was what Bucky had meant, but hoping that he'd been sort of following their conversation.

"Hydra head," Bucky whispered. "Cut off one head, two grow back."

Bruce gave Steve a worried look, silently suggesting that Bucky was rambling now, but it wasn't something Steve was willing to ignore. If Alexander Pierce was the head of Hydra, it was something he wanted to know before they left this freaking dog and pony show.

When they finally reached the road where they'd left the others, Tony, Coulson, and Clint ran toward them as soon as they spotted the flying monkey in Steve's arms.

"Holy fuck," Clint said when he was close enough. "Is that Bucky Barnes?"


	9. Chapter 9

_"Holy fuck, is that Bucky Barnes?"_

Tony's first thought was the most selfish one of his life, but he shoved it aside to help Steve.

"We think we broke Loki's spell," Steve said, talking to all of them. "But it seems pretty clear that Hydra has been controlling him with some sort of brainwashing. The man I know would never have done the things the Winter Soldier has credited to him."

Coulson nodded his agreement. Everyone knew he was a huge Captain America fan, so it wasn't much of a stretch that he'd know all about Captain America's best friend as well. Their bromance had been the stuff of epic legend after all.

Tony looked at the way Steve cradled the slightly smaller man in his arms and wondered if maybe there had been more between them than the books had known. After all, _that_ kind of relationship had been illegal back then.

Again, Tony shoved aside his jealousy and turned his attention to the matter at hand. Steve was quick to explain what they'd learned and within moments, Clint and Coulson were running toward the Emerald City to find out exactly who the wizard was and hopefully find out what side the guy was on.

Tony led Steve off the road and helped him settle at the base of a tree, Bucky still held securely in his arms.

"I thought he was dead," Steve said quietly. "We didn't even try to go back for his body after he fell from the train. A fall like that should have killed him."

"Unless he was a super soldier," Tony said, piecing the information together. He'd read everything there was to read about James Buchanan Barnes, and he'd often wondered what experiments Zola had been doing before Steve had managed to rescue the 107th. 

"Yeah," Steve said, smoothing the long black hair away from Bucky's eyes, "that's what Bruce and Natasha suggested."

"You okay, Cap?" Tony asked, unsure what to do or how to react to this most unexpected situation.

"Yeah," Steve lied as the tears began to fall.

~*~

"Loki this is madness," Thor said, his voice not nearly as angry as it had been the last time he'd said that to him.

Loki tried to smirk and hide behind his mischievous façade that he usually projected, but the effort fell flat. Even he hadn't known the identity of the Winter Soldier, so everything that was happening now had not been part of his plan. Yes, he'd been using the movie as a way to reveal things the Earth's _Mightiest_ Heroes needed to know, but he'd also wanted it to be something that they could maybe laugh about later.

He hadn't expected the sudden right turn onto Serious Street, and he sure as fuck hadn't planned on breaking Captain America.

And he hadn't built a failsafe into his spell because he hadn't expected to need one. 

"They have to use the shoes," he said to Thor, not expecting his brother to really understand. He was pretty sure Thor had never watched this movie before.

"So you can't get them out?"

"No," Loki admitted reluctantly, embarrassed to say it out loud. He was usually far more prepared that this. Living among these humans—well on their periphery since they didn't actually know he was there most of the time—had made him soft, had made him arrogant and careless. "Their best chance to rescue Barnes is to break his programming enough that he'll not only remember them but have the capacity to hide the knowledge from Hydra, but I doubt they're going to have enough time."

"So everyone will go back to where they were before you cast your spell?" Thor asked. 

Loki nodded. 

"And the ones who don't remember themselves while inside the movie won't remember what happened to them after they get back home?"

Loki rolled his eyes because, hey, old habits died hard and his brother had a habit of asking irksome questions. "Of course," he said irritably, "the idea was to alert your teammates to the threats they face while still having my own fun. I even had plans of putting photos of Tony Stark in a dress on the Internet."

"You've changed much about their futures," Thor said, surprising Loki with his sudden observation. Thor had always been the soldier, the warrior, and had studied only the very basics of magic when they'd been young. That he was aware of the cyclical nature of time suggested he wasn't as clueless as he often made others believe.

"So have you," Loki said, acknowledging the changes Thor's involvement in this timeline had wrought. 

"Aye," Thor agreed. "The Midgardians are worth saving, even if they're a very flawed species."

"They're still doomed," Loki said, voicing his concern out loud for the first time. His and Thor's involvement were really just drops in a vast ocean of problems, but with the Chitauri defeated the Midgardians had a far better chance. And if they could weed out Hydra from SHIELD and avoid the superhero civil war that always seemed to follow in the timelines, the entire planet's future looked much brighter.

Thor and Loki silently watched the TV screen as Hawkeye and Coulson snuck into the deserted Emerald City, located a meeting that involved the highest ranked members of Hydra—including their leader, Alexander Pierce, and Agent Sitwell, a man the Avengers had considered a friend—and then headed back to the main group.

The movie returned to the scene with Captain America crying over his unconscious best friend while Iron Man stood awkwardly nearby. Loki's plan to bring the two together and avoid a war between them was fast unraveling.

"Thor, I need to send you in."

Thor winced. "You can't. Your magic won't work on me." 

Loki lifted an eyebrow in surprise before he put two and two together. "Mother!" he growled in frustration.

"Yeah," Thor said, the humor leaking back into his voice. "While I quite enjoyed my time as a giant frog, Odin felt it wasn't a good look for the future king."

Loki ground his back teeth together, unhappy with the reminder despite the fact that he'd accepted long ago that he would never be the king of Asgard. There had been that one timeline where Loki had successfully impersonated Odin, but it had hastened Ragnarok and Loki had not tried it again.

"I have an idea," Thor said excitedly. Loki rolled his eyes again because Thor had a habit of being overly happy when things were grim. And because old habits were hard to break. Loki had been rolling his eyes at Thor's antics for several millennia now. It was going to take at least a few years for him to learn to ignore the instinct.

Loki couldn't help but smile wryly, though, when his big dumb brother reached for the Midgardian version of a communication device—a Starkphone, if Loki was reading the label correctly—and grinned in triumph.

~*~

Tony was so used to holding a phone or tablet in his hands that it took him a few moments to realize it hadn't been there a minute ago. He read the little sticky note written in Thor's heavy scrawl and then cued the video message he'd sent.

Clint and Coulson arrived just as Tony pressed play.

"My friends," Thor said in his usual booming voice. The guy did not have any concept of an "inside" voice. "Loki has informed me that the only way to finish his spell is by using the boots Tony retrieved from the Loki clone." 

Tony shook his head slowly, happy to have their exit confirmed, but it wasn't like they wouldn't have tried it very soon.

"However," Thor continued, "Loki also advises that everyone who remembers who they are inside the movie will remember what happened when they get back home. The others will not." 

"Well that definitely clinches it. We have to wake Fury," Tony said, perhaps a little more maliciously than he'd intended. The guy was the ultimate super spy, even his secrets had secrets, and so maybe remembering himself as a whining, cussing, three-feet-tall munchkin with delusions of grandeur would be good for the man, perhaps even humbling. And he sure as fuck needed to know that Hydra had grown inside of SHIELD.

Still, Tony wanted to snicker at the image of the director of SHIELD running in circles while the Winter Soldier, AKA, Bucky Barnes lazily swooped down to pick him up and carry him away. Where was a camera when he'd needed one?

Steve gave Tony a look that was probably meant as a silent chastisement, but even he couldn't quite keep a straight face. 

"But rest assured," Thor continued on the recording, "all will be returned to their real lives. None will be left behind."

That was a relief, especially since they'd yet to locate a few people who probably should have been in the movie—Rhodey and Pepper were two who came instantly to Tony's mind.

"Steve," Thor said, making his voice louder as if the super soldier couldn't hear him. "Neither I nor Loki knew that your friend was alive, and we sincerely apologize for that failure. Loki assures me that he had not been part of his…" He hesitated, glancing over the top of the camera's field as if looking at Loki. "My brother meant no harm and has offered to retrieve Sargent Barnes as soon as you can learn his location. We won't be able to cure his mind, but we should be able to rescue him before his captors can react." Again he glanced at Loki off screen. "We're watching you on the TV, so all we need is his current whereabouts and a few moments head start."

Tony breathed a soft sigh of relief that Bucky wouldn't suddenly "wake" in front of his handlers without the possibility of a rescue. Loki hadn't really given them much reason to trust him, but Tony felt confident that on this one thing he would very likely follow through. And on the slim chance that Tony was wrong, Thor would probably give Loki that kicked-puppy look he did so well until Loki finished what he started.

The recording ended with Thor fumbling for the stop button and Loki huffing his annoyance when he was forced to take the phone from him and push the stop button himself.

"Okay," Tony said, wincing when he realized what they were really facing here, "all we need to do is convince an overwhelmed, currently unconscious, confused flying monkey to wake up and remember his real life, then somehow break free enough of his Hydra programming to tell us his current whereabouts so that we can rely on the very person who trapped us in here to somehow rescue him from anywhere in the world."

Yeah, Steve looked about as confident as Tony felt.


	10. Chapter 10

"It might not be that complicated," Coulson said, stepping closer to where Steve was still holding Bucky in his arms. "All we need to do is convince the soldier to give a situation report to a superior officer." Coulson wore that calm, confident smile that was only slightly different to his Taze-Drool-Carpet-Nanny threat, but different enough for Tony to notice.

"It's worth a try," Tony said, wincing slightly when Steve gave him an irritated look as if he'd expected Tony to disagree with Coulson. 

"I won't let anyone else hurt him," Steve said stubbornly, his voice threaded with the steel of his conviction. "He's been hurt enough."

"Cap," Clint said, fearlessly stepping into the brewing argument, "if your theory about time in here is correct, the movie is almost over. We don't have time to break him free of Hydra's mental hold, but if we can find out where he is we don't need to. Loki can retrieve him the moment he knows his location."

"Steve," Coulson said, none of his fanboy crush on Captain America evident in his tone, "this is the safest way with the options we have."

For one heart-stopping moment, Steve turned his gaze to Tony as if to ask his opinion, before changing his mind and nodding instead.

Coulson didn't hesitate. "Soldier, sitrep!" he demanded in a cold, superior-officer's tone of voice.

Bucky woke immediately, his mouth forming the words automatically, the reaction very obviously part of his programming 

Tony's blood ran cold when he realized who the Winter Soldier's next target actually was. It was true he didn't like Fury very much, but he'd never wanted the man dead.

And then something really strange happened, despite his best efforts, the boots he was wearing moved to click the heels together three times.

"We're out of time," Tony yelled to them all, and then because he seemed to have even less control over his over voice than he did on his acquired shoes, he whispered, "There's no place like home."

~*~

Steve paced back and forth in front of the TV ignoring the picture of him and Tony on the screen. Apparently Loki's spell wasn't quite finished yet. It looked like they were going to play out the final "and you were there, and you were there" scene whether they wanted to or not.

But he'd be damned if he'd do anything more than pace until Loki fulfilled his promise and brought Bucky to them.

Natasha and Bruce were in each other's arms and quietly talking Clint down from what were very likely the same panicky fears Steve was feeling. He desperately wanted to grab Tony and hold on tight, but the emotions and attraction he'd clearly felt for the man only an hour ago were muddied and confused. Bucky being alive changed everything.

No, Steve thought, catching a glimpse of the nonchalance Tony was trying and failing to project, nothing had really changed for Steve—he still loved Tony the same way—but things were suddenly far more complicated.

And how many times had Tony claimed that he didn't "do" complicated? He had the reputation of being a lothario for a reason.

"Pointbreak," Tony called, using yet another ridiculous nickname for one of his teammates, "any idea how long it'll take your brother to get to DC and back?"

Thor shook his head and plastered a smile onto his face, but Steve knew Thor's tells well enough. The god of thunder was hiding something.

"Thor?" Steve asked quietly, using his Captain-America-expects-an-honest-answer voice. It always amazed him that Thor, of all of their teammates, was the one most affected by it.

"Loki said your friend, Bucky, is surrounded by a team of SHIELD agents led by Brock Rumlow."

Steve wasn't quite willing to believe Loki just yet—he'd gather evidence of his own before accusing potentially innocent men of hideous actions—but if Bucky was being closely monitored by people who knew all about Loki, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to track him back to the Avengers. As much as Steve wanted to throw caution to the winds, he was experienced enough to realize getting Bucky out of there without a trace was the better choice for long-term success.

"When was the last time you heard from Loki?"

Thor tapped his ear to draw attention to the communication device the Avengers used on missions. Loki had always belittled the technology they relied on, but Steve was very grateful that he'd chosen to use it this time. He was even more grateful when Thor handed him one to use.

Expecting some sort of scathing comment, Steve was more than a little terrified when he heard only silence. Of course, that could simply mean Loki currently had nothing to report. Several tense minutes ticked by before Loki whispered into the comms.

"We're incoming," he said caustically. "Be ready. Your soldier is still armed."

The words barely made it through to Steve's brain before Loki and a long-haired man wearing a mask and black combat gear literally popped into the room. Steve grabbed the gun Bucky—no, right now he was the Winter Soldier—still had aimed at his previous target and wrenched it from the soldier's grip.

Surprise barely slowed the man down and Steve was suddenly wishing he'd spent the past ten minutes grabbing his shield instead of pacing in front of the TV. He was grateful and not at all surprised when Bucky's metal arm made a crackling, fizzing noise when one of Natasha's magnetic discs fried the circuitry.

Of course, the relief was short lived when Bucky tore the tiny circle away, rolled his shoulder to apparently reset the limb and managed to retrieve a knife at the same time.

Thankfully Steve was still surrounded by his team, each and every one of them—Loki included—moving to subdue and disarm the world's most dangerous assassin before he could harm any of them.

It ended with Bucky unconscious, but breathing, and Bruce quickly giving them access to his hulk-out room. Unable to bear the idea of Bucky being alone a moment longer, Steve stepped inside the empty room, gathered Bucky in his arms and then slid down the wall to hold him much the same way as he'd done beneath the tree in Oz. 

He was very relieved to hear the closing music of the movie playing on the TV as the door slid closed.

~*~

Tony was cracking jokes. They were smart-ass, ridiculous, thinly veiled insults but he couldn't seem to stop. Fear for Steve was messing with his head, but so was the idea that even if the Winter Soldier didn't attack and kill Steve, Bucky Barnes just might be the final death knell to a relationship that had barely started.

So Tony mouthed off, talking constantly, and being even more obnoxious than when he was actually trying to annoy people. Bruce kept giving him worried frowns, but it was Natasha who finally smacked him upside the head—literally—and Tony was suddenly very glad that she was no longer wearing the Tin Woman's form.

"Sir," JARVIS said while Tony was still rubbing the spot Natasha had slapped. It hadn't been too hard, but he saw no reason not to make a big deal of it. Natasha rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed. At least the familiar voice of his AI washed over Tony and helped him to calm down just a little. "I have a man on the line who claims to be Agent Coulson."

Clint immediately lifted his head, the hope shining in his eyes too difficult to see. 

"Patch him through to Hawkeye's phone," Tony ordered, turning away when he saw Clint close his eyes with relief when he heard his not-so-dead husband's voice on the line. 

"Okay," Tony said, reaching for a tablet as he tried to imagine all the things Steve would be ordering them to do right now if he wasn't locked in the hulk-out room with the most dangerous assassin of the past fifty years. "Details. We need to record every detail we remember. If we can figure out how high this thing goes, maybe we can weed Hydra out of SHIELD before they become an even bigger problem."

"I've already called Fury," Natasha said quietly as she and Bruce moved to stand either side of Tony. "He remembers what happened in the movie. Apparently, being thrown at Brock Rumlow's feet managed to jolt him back to reality." 

Tony didn't really get a chance to enjoy the idea—Fury's ego was no doubt large enough to absorb the blow—before Natasha glanced at the hulk-out room where Steve still held an unconscious Bucky across his lap, his face tucked against Steve's vulnerable throat. Tony quickly looked away. What chance did Steve have if Bucky used his teeth? The man had been trained and brainwashed into being the most deadly assassin ever known. There was no way he wouldn't employ every weapon in his arsenal if he felt the need to escape.

"Bruce and I are going to take the quinjet to DC," Natasha said. "Whatever Hydra is planning, it seems to be beginning now. Sending the Winter Soldier to take out Fury was likely just the first step."

Fucking fabulous. Five minutes warning was not a warning at all.

"Loki, you asshole!" Tony yelled into the air, furious with the Asgardian prince—who'd since disappeared—for everything he'd put them through.

"Breathe, Tony," Clint said, moving to stand beside him as Natasha and Bruce left the room. "We know a lot more than we did a couple hours ago." It was probably more convincing coming from the man who had more reason to hate Loki than any of them, but Tony wasn't in the mood for being reasonable.

"What good will it do us if we can't stop them?" Tony asked morosely. He wasn't usually so negative, but it had been one hell of a day.

Clint gave him a sympathetic look, but jutted his chin toward the hulk-out room. "We've already taken their star quarterback out of the game."

"And we've got two teams, plus myself, and Loki headed to DC to help Fury," Thor said, passing through the room in full battle gear to collect his hammer that was for some reason sitting on the glass coffee table.

"Coulson and his new team are picking me up on the way through once they've secured the Hydra agent in their midst," Clint added. "And we already know the major players involved. Loki gave us certainty where before we had nothing. We've got this."

"I guess I should suit up, then," Tony said, split between feeling happy to have something else to concentrate on and fearing for Steve's life.

Clint shook his head. "Stay, look after Cap." Tony tried really hard to hide what he was feeling right now, but apparently Hawkeye could assess a battle situation even when he was up close. "He needs you here and we'll be back before you can miss us."

Tony had a smart-ass reply to that somewhere, but the words just wouldn't come out of his mouth. Instead he leaned over and hugged Clint hard. "I'm glad Agent's not dead."

"Me too," Clint said happily as he returned the hug and then exited the room.

Tony turned back to the hulk-out room and realized Steve was watching him closely. He beckoned Tony over with a small wave.

~*~

The Winter Soldier lay very still, careful to give the impression that he remained unconscious, as he catalogued first his own injuries—none other than a mild, lingering headache—and then his situation—cuddled close and breathing in a familiar scent.

Had they wiped him again?

He searched his mind and found the memories he'd been hiding. No, he hadn't been in the chair then, but that didn't explain his current fatigue.

Plus the strong arms around him were confusing. They weren't actually holding him down. It felt more like a comfortable embrace than a restraint and reminded him of the man on the bridge, but that didn't make any sense since the memory was of a lion on the bridge and Bucky… Whoa, where the fuck did that name come from? He was the Winter Soldier, the Asset, not Bucky Barnes of the 107th who had been captured by Hydra and rescued by Bucky's best friend, Captain America.

He searched his memory for where that information had come from and was surprised to find it in long term memory instead of being listed in his mission briefs. He was almost certain that hadn't been there before.

His last target had been "Fury, Nicholas J" yet the urge to complete his mission was, well, not entirely gone, but certainly subdued. Had his orders changed?

Again he searched his mind and found nothing in the mission brief or his long term memory to explain why he didn't feel the overwhelming urge to complete his mission and return to the safe house for processing.

He shuddered at the word, knowing without knowing how, that "processing" was the euphemism the handlers used when they were preparing to put him back into the deep freeze.

It was the way it had always been and he had no reason to fear it. He'd been built specifically to fulfill his function as Hydra's most deadly assassin.

Yet the scent of the man holding him was eerily familiar. Without really considering possible outcomes, Bucky—it felt like his name, it really did—licked over the soft skin and taut muscles of the neck of the man holding him.

The man jolted in surprise and then started to laugh when he did it again. "Bucky, what the hell are you doing?" The words were jovial and familiar, sending a warm tingle down Bucky's spine as he drank in the myriad sensations. 

"I have no idea," he said, the words strangely familiar on his tongue. "Living in the moment, maybe?"

"Can't argue against that," the man said, "but you could at least buy me dinner first." 

It was obvious that the guy was teasing. "Punk," Bucky said, the affection in his own voice natural and easy.

"Jerk," the man responded with another easy laugh.

There was something about those two words. They felt almost like a ritual, as familiar and as comfortable as a well-worn boot. He shifted slightly in the embrace and then smiled at the man smiling down at him.

After a few moments of lightheaded happiness, Bucky glanced around the empty room and finally realized it was some kind of cell. "What crazy fight have you gotten us into this time, punk?" he asked, a little bit surprised by the wobble in his voice. 

~*~

Steve held Bucky tighter as the shakes began. He'd been worried something like this might happen. Hydra undoubtedly used a cocktail of drugs to control Bucky, but with a super soldier's metabolism he would likely burn through them very quickly. With no one from Hydra to administer more, Bucky was very likely going to go through severe withdrawal symptoms. Judging by the amount of shaking right now, it was going to be a very unpleasant ride.

Possibly deadly.

It was why Steve had signaled for Tony to come closer. He mouthed his instructions silently, knowing that JARVIS would be able to interpret the words by reading his lips.

Tony nodded his understanding, spoke to JARVIS, and then held up his hand to indicate that the medical team would be there in five minutes. 

It was going to be a very long five minutes.

Steve was still trying to think of something to distract both himself and Bucky from his deteriorating condition when a soft click and a nearly silent hissing noise came from Bucky's arm.

One moment Steve was holding his best friend.

The next, he was fighting for his life.


	11. Chapter 11

"JARVIS," Tony asked, forcing calm into his voice as he activated the bracelets and called the armor to him, "what just happened in there?"

"I believe Sergeant Barnes received a dosage of medication from a hidden compartment in his metal prosthesis."

It was just like fucking Hydra to plant mind-controlling drugs inside the guy's metal arm. Fucking assholes.

"Scan it," Tony growled, angry at himself for not thinking of that first. Any other time he would have been salivating over such incredible tech, but he'd been too busy trying to think the way Steve would that he'd completely overlooked the necessity to think the way he usually did too.

He was a genius, a born multi-tasker, but apparently learning that the mythical Winter Soldier was actually Captain America's best friend thought to have died in the Second World War was enough to throw him off his game. Who knew?

"J, open the door," Tony said the moment the armor wrapped around him.

"I'm afraid that wouldn't be a good idea at the moment, sir," JARVIS said in a tone the AI had learned on its own. Tony had programmed it to snark and to sass and to monitor life signs and safety issues and to run herd over the various other quirky robots he'd built. He had no idea how the program he'd written had interpreted that as caring, but somehow the tone was in its voice.

"Now, J," Tony said, overriding the AI's objections. The door slid open, Tony stepped inside, and then gave the AI the order to close it. JARVIS didn't bother to object, but he made a sound not unlike the one the real Jarvis would have made when Tony had been acting reckless.

The trouble was, once he was inside he had no idea how to separate two super soldiers without killing one of them. Steve was clearly stronger, but Bucky was fighting dirty, using everything he had to try to kill a man he considered his enemy. Steve was trying to stop his friend, not kill him, so there was a very good chance he was going to lose.

"Sir, may I suggest the gas Doctor Banner designed to try and subdue the Hulk?"

"It hasn't been tested yet."

"No, sir, it hasn't, but I think perhaps the situation calls for an aggressive approach. It may be advisable to forgo the safety precautions you usually ignore."

"Uh, yeah, good call, J," Tony said, again annoyed that he hadn't thought of that himself. "Ten percent strength to start."

"Very good, sir," JARVIS said as gas slowly started to fill the room. It was odorless—the Hulk tended to panic if he thought he was being sedated, so it was a good idea not to warn him beforehand—so neither of the combatants noticed until they began feeling the effects. They were up to forty percent strength by then. Damn, super soldiers.

The Winter Soldier fought harder, obviously discerning the threat even if he couldn't smell it. Thankfully that distracted Bucky enough for Steve to land a few decent hits and to finally get him in a headlock. The metal arm was a serious problem though and Steve's face was starting to look like ground steak.

JARVIS again did Tony's thinking for him—hey, he designed the AI so technically it was him thinking anyway—and started flashing up as many specifications as he could gather about the Winter Soldier's arm.

It took Tony a split second after that to pinpoint the most effective placement and then used his repulsors to deliver a debilitating blow.

And just because the damn thing was built by fucking Hydra, warnings started flashing in front of Tony's face. "Fuck," he cursed as he powered up his one-off laser cutter and quickly cut the arm off.

Steve looked stunned until a whirring sound came from a mechanism inside the severed metal limb and a possibly lethal dose of drugs pumped uselessly onto the floor and not into the Winter Soldier's body. Steve pulled the now-unconscious Bucky back into his embrace and whispered three breathless words. 

"Thank you, Tony."

~*~ 

"As far as we can tell," the medical tech said, "the drugs were probably the main thing keeping him compliant. Without them we think he should regain at least a few of his memories the way he did when Ca–Captain America spoke with him earlier." The guy was clearly nervous and not the only one in the room wishing Bruce was here. "We don't know how much of the serum Sergeant Barnes has or how that translates into his healing factor. We also have no idea how often he was…fr–fr–frozen or…um…put into the"—he checked his notes—"chair to have his mind wiped."

The guy actually looked like he was going to be sick.

"Thank you, Doctor," Steve said, letting the man off the proverbial hook. They'd already made sure that Bucky wasn't going to bleed out—Tony's cut had gone through the upper part of Bucky's metal arm, not flesh—and they'd taken samples of the drug on the floor and of Bucky's blood, so that was good enough for Steve right now. 

Steve had refused to let them secure Bucky to the bed, so he was a little bit annoyed to look up and see Tony enter the room without his Iron Man armor.

"Relax, Capsicle," Tony said, apparently deciding to revert to the obnoxious, overly confident personality he'd worn like a cloak the first time Steve had met him. "The armor isn't far away." He held up his arms to show Steve the bracelets that would call it too him, and then made a show of exploring the room. "I just thought your…friend"—he seemed to stumble over that word as if he'd intended to use another—"would be more comfortable not feeling like he was…you, know…being held prisoner." 

Technically Bucky was their prisoner at the moment, but Steve could appreciate Tony's thinking. Of course that did nothing to quell the fear and anger that coursed through him when he considered the risk Tony was taking. Bucky was fast and determined and even without the metal arm could do a whole lot of damage before Tony could call his armor.

Steve moved slightly, careful to place himself between Tony and Bucky, just in case.

"Have we heard from the others?"

Tony grinned. "Yup," he said, wandering around the room and inspecting everything as if he hadn't been in here countless times before. There was always at least one of them needing medical attention after a fight. "So far our teams have swept through SHIELD like avenging angels, wrangling naughty little Hydra minions by the dozen without actually tipping off the others."

"So we're taking Loki's word for it?" Steve asked, still not entirely convinced that Loki's stunt had shown them the truth, despite the fact that a man he'd believed died decades ago was asleep in the bed beside him.

"Containment is more important at the moment," Tony said offhandedly, still not looking at Steve.

"So guilty until proven innocent?" Steve asked, anger burning in his chest. He'd willingly given his life to protect people and their right to freedom. Arresting them before they'd done anything wrong didn't sit right with him at all.

"Something like that," Tony said, his words again delivered as if he wasn't really listening or even interested in the conversation.

Steve could feel his temper rising but swallowed down the angry words when he noticed Tony was shaking. It wasn't at all like Tony to react that way, even after the adrenaline high of a dangerous battle.

"Tony?" Steve asked, forcing calm into his voice. A few hours ago they'd been kissing, Steve finally reaching for the relationship he'd dreamed of having with this incredible man. He didn't want things to fall apart this close to having everything he wanted. The way Tony had reacted suggested he'd wanted it too.

"Okay," Tony said, talking as if Steve hadn't spoken. "Things to do, people to see. Call the doctor or the nurse, or you know, JARVIS if you need anything."

"Tony," Steve repeated quietly. 

The genius actually flinched and started to inspect all the medical supplies again. After a few moments of complete silence, Tony let out a soft breath, glanced at Steve and then spoke even as he moved toward the exit.

"Cap, it's okay. I get it. I do. He's your best friend."

"Tony, no—" Steve started to say, but Tony simply shook his head and cut him off.

"We're okay, Cap," Tony said, his gaze darting around the room nervously. "Really, you and me, we're good."

And before Steve could try to say anything else, Tony was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

Bucky woke with a monster of a fucking headache. He squinted against the dull light and tried to take in his surroundings. Every instinct screamed at him to silently assess the situation before reacting, but he breathed a soft sigh of relief when his gaze finally landed on the outline of his best friend.

"Steve?" he asked, his voice raw as if he'd recently spent a good amount of time screaming. He tried to remember why that would have happened, even tentatively moving to check if he was injured. His left arm felt strange.

"Welcome back," Steve said, sounding tired. He handed Bucky a small cup of water and helped steady him so that he could lift it to his lips. He drank greedily, the cool liquid soothing some of the fire in his throat.

"What happened? Was I injured?" He had a vague memory of a fight on a moving train. "Did I—" That memory couldn't be right. "Why do I remember falling from a train?"

"It's a long story, Buck," Steve said. "Try to get some more rest."

"I think," Bucky said trying to assess his own reaction as either truth or false bravado and deciding it was a bit of both, "I've slept enough for the moment." He laughed softly, his throat aching with the effort. "You know how it is. Once you start dreaming about flying monkeys, it's time to get up."

Steve's tired face actually paled even more.

Bucky breathed out his annoyance. It didn't matter that the man beside him was Captain America, to Bucky he was still that skinny kid from Brooklyn who'd been his best friend most of his life. And it was just like Steve to try and withhold information in a misguided effort to protect Bucky.

"Spit it out, punk," Bucky said. "Whatever it is you're not telling me, just say it already."

"It's actually a very long story," a man said from the doorway. He moved closer to the bed, watching Bucky closely as if he might object. "And to be honest it's a story we'd all like to avoid telling you, but unfortunately it would seem that your version of the serum is going to help you recover at last some of those memories eventually."

"Serum?" Bucky asked, looking at Steve instead of the other man.

"Yeah," Steve said. "This is Doctor Banner. He's been going over your test results."

"Bruce," the doctor said. "Just call me Bruce." He looked down at the clipboard he was carrying as if to check a few facts. "The experiments they did to you in Zola's lab… They were similar to what was done to Steve. Your version of the serum was slightly different, but you seem to have gained many of the same effects."

Bucky wasn't particularly thrilled to hear that had been done without his permission, but if it helped him to protect Steve and the rest of the Howling Commandos, and maybe even helped the Allies win the war in the process, he wasn't going to complain. He shrugged. "And?"

"And, well, it helped you to survive the fall from the train," Steve said.

"I figured that one out for myself," Bucky said, raising an eyebrow in the hopes that they'd get to the point. He knew Steve's guilt-face when he saw it. "And?"

Bruce and Steve exchanged a look that made Bucky want to knock their heads together. He might not have the best education, but he wasn't some clueless punk either. "And?" he asked again, growing more irritated.

"And," said a third man who hurried into the room like he owned the place, "they're dancing around the fact that the war ended nearly seventy years ago."

"Tony," both of the other men said in unison, but Tony waved away their objections.

"He needs to know." He turned to Bucky. "We won by the way." And then he turned back to Steve. "He's going to learn it eventually anyway, so he may as well hear it from people he knows. Well he only knows you at the moment since you're the only one who's old enough to have been around, but that'll change. Well not the age part. The knowing us part. He'll get to know us all soon enough." The man was talking almost faster than Bucky could listen. He gave Bucky a sassy wink. "By the way, sleeping beauty, welcome back. You've been greatly missed."

"Seven years?" Bucky asked trying to take in all those rapid-fire words and use his fingers to rub away the persistent headache at the same time. Surely he'd heard that wrong. "I've been unconscious for seven _years_?"

"Nope," Tony said, popping the "p" sound and moving to Bucky's left side with a type of manic efficiency that Bucky had always associated with Howard Stark. Tony produced a small metal cylinder that looked like it came out of a science fiction comic. "Seven, zero. Seventy years. That's thirty less than one hundred. Oh, hey, soon we'll be celebrating one hundredth birthdays for both of you." 

Bucky shot Steve an annoyed look, but instead of getting the "he's just joking" response he'd been expecting, Steve gave him a sad smile and nodded.

"How?"

Tony gave Bruce a mock-serious frown. "You haven't told him about the serum yet?"

"We have," Steve said, sounding irritated, "but we didn't get a chance to explain any details."

"Well then," Tony said with another of those flirty winks, "the man needs details, and I just need a couple more quick measurements before I can get out of the way."

Bucky didn't really want the man to leave. Tony seemed brutally honest in a way that Bucky had always appreciated. Steve on the other hand was always trying to make everyone's lives easier—except his own, of course.

"Tony? Where are we?"

"New York," the man said, twisting something on the metal cylinder before moving closer to the bed. "Avengers tower actually." He half shook his head. "Well technically it's Stark Tower but when the Chitauri attacked and all but the 'A' was destroyed, we unofficially renamed it Avengers tower, since this is where we all live now anyway."

"Huh?"

"Oh yeah," Tony said, grinning the sort of smile a politician would use on the campaign trail, "your boyfriend's a superhero. I guess he hasn't gotten around to telling you that yet either."

"Tony," Steve said, sounding completely exasperated. It was the same tone of voice he'd used for Howard Stark when he'd been in one of his "manic inventor" moods. 

In fact, now that Bucky was looking more closely, Tony did resemble the guy quite a lot and he'd called this building Stark Tower. Was he Howard's brother, maybe? Oh, except it had been seventy years.

Seventy years. Fucking hell.

"Are you related to Howard Stark?" Bucky asked, trying to distract himself from thinking too hard on somehow leapfrogging into the future. He was a little disconcerted by the sudden silence in the room, but when he glanced down to see what Tony was measuring with his little metal cylinder he was completely distracted from _everything_ else.

"What the fuck happened to my arm?"

~*~

Steve watched Tony clam up at the first mention of his father. He'd known for a while now that the Howard Stark who'd raised Tony hadn't been anything like the man he and Bucky had known. JARVIS had filled him in on a few details, but Steve had quickly learned to leave Howard out of his reminiscing when Tony was around.

Bucky's question jolted them all, but of course, it was Tony who was the first to recover.

"Your arm was trying to kill you, so I cut it off."

Bucky opened his mouth, but no words came out. Tony answered his question anyway.

"Long story short… You lost it when you fell from the train, Hydra found you and gave you the metal one, and when you broke your programming and got captured by the enemy—technically that'd be us—it tried to pump you with a lethal dose of illegal drugs."

Steve held his breath, not sure whether to yell at Tony for his half-assed, almost-mocking explanation, or deal with Bucky's reaction first.

Instead, Bucky shrugged, taking the news with far more calm than Steve could have mustered.

"I guess that means I owe you my life," Bucky said to Tony. "Thanks."

Tony hesitated, and for the first time Steve realized just how much work Tony did for the team and how often it was not fully appreciated. But in typical Tony Stark fashion, Tony turned it into a joke.

"True," he said, grinning lasciviously, "we'll talk about how you can repay me, later."

Bucky didn't seem offended, so Steve let it go for now, but it was definitely something Steve and Tony were going to talk about when things calmed down.

~*~

Tony hurried through the building, doing his best to give off the "genius at work, do not disturb" vibe that he'd cultivated over the years. 

But the moment he stepped into his lab and ordered JARVIS to go to full privacy protocols his knees were shaking so badly that he simply lowered himself to the ground.

How the fuck had he gotten here? 

After twelve months of flirting and dancing around each other, he and Steve had finally admitted their attraction only to learn less than an hour later that the love of Steve's life was still alive. If Tony had held any doubt whatsoever that the two men had been a couple back in the day, one glimpse of them together was enough to quell the most skeptical of men.

Tony closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and tried not to think about the ridiculous way he'd flirted with Bucky Barnes. It had been a defensive reflex, an in-your-face attempt to erase the legitimacy of the flirting he'd done with Steve. Clint would probably label it "epically dumbass."

Of course, if Pepper ever learned some of the things he'd said to Bucky she'd send Tony to another course on appropriate behavior in the workplace in the vague hopes of avoiding more sexual harassment suits.

The saddest part was that he hadn't really been flirting at all. He'd just been trying to protect what was left of his stupid heart.

~*~

"Well that didn't go quite as you expected," Frigga said, appearing beside Loki's elbow as if the distance between realms meant nothing. Loki, of course, knew better. His mother wasn't actually here. Her physical presence was nothing more than a rather advanced form of technology humans would call a hologram, but she could see and hear enough to know what was going on. Loki waved his hand and the spells he'd been using to watch the various Avengers flickered from sight.

"I do wish that it was easier to convince Thor to mind his own business," Loki said, being sure to throw in a heavy dose of disdain.

"Nonsense," Frigga said with a warm smile. "Your brother is proud of you for what you're trying to do here."

"I'm sure guilt plays no small part in that," Loki added acerbically. It had hurt way more than he'd expected it might when Thor had joined forces with the humans to defeat him and the Chitauri. His golden brother had never even considered the idea that Loki might have been trying to stop the invading force with clever manipulation. It hadn't helped anything when Loki had been mad enough to stab the guy, but since they were both far less breakable than mortal humans, the injury had been nothing more than a scratch by comparison.

He refused to think any further back than that. Sending the Destroyer to Earth had been nothing more than sibling rivalry—the very rivalry Odin himself had fostered. It had resulted with Thor getting his powers back and having his hammer returned. Surely Loki couldn't be blamed when things had worked out exactly as Odin had expected.

Instead of saying any of that out loud, he rolled his eyes and huffed out a tired sigh. "Why are you here, Mother?"

"Can't a mother visit her son once in a while?" she asked.

"Did you forget I'm adopted?" Loki asked mildly, not really meaning the words, but annoyed enough at his own plans being thwarted to act like a mean-spirited child. The way things were going, the Midgardians were right on track for their apparently inevitable superhero civil war. 

Of all the things that happened in the timeline that was always the most destructive. The stubborn disagreement between Captain America and Iron Man inevitably left the planet open to an even greater threat. With loyalties split and teamwork fractured, the Earth's Mightiest Heroes were doomed to fail every time.

"Loki," Frigga said, moving closer despite the fact she would be unable to touch him, "you have always been my son." He turned toward her to make a scathing remark, but she gave him a soft smile and he faltered. "And I am proud of you for trying to save Midgard."

"It's a fools errand," Loki spat, more irritated with himself for not realizing the identity of the Winter Soldier. In other timelines he'd remained in cryo-freeze and had not affected the outcome either way. 

So why was this one different?

Everything, really.

Thor was involved, the Chitauri had failed in their attempt to get a foothold in New York, and Hydra hadn't been forced to take over SHIELD earlier than planned. And of course, now, Loki had no way of extracting Sergeant Barnes from the equation without causing more damage.

Frigga gave him a knowing smile as if she'd been able to follow every thought in his mind. She didn't have that skill, as far as Loki knew, but she was the one person in the universe who knew him best.

"Loki, you are no fool," she said, her love for him shining in her eyes the way it always did, "and you have a noble heart. Perhaps the answer to your unexpected love triangle is more simple than you think."

Loki didn't get a chance to demand an explanation before his mother's image faded out.


	13. Chapter 13

"Sir, Sergeant Barnes is requesting access to the workshop."

Tony startled at that strange idea. Last he'd seen Barnes he'd been confined to bed and pretty much under house arrest. "Does Steve know where he is?" Tony asked Jarvis.

"I do not believe so, sir," JARVIS replied.

"Is Barnes even allowed out of bed yet?"

"According to Doctor Banner's medical notes, I do not believe so. Sergeant Barnes seems quite upset."

"Homicidal upset?" Tony asked warily. It wouldn't be the first time someone he knew wanted to kill him. Obie hadn't even blinked.

JARVIS seemed to hesitate for a moment. "I do not believe Sergeant Barnes is a danger to you at this time, sir, but perhaps I should call Captain Rogers for assistance."

"Call Clint instead," Tony said, the urge to avoid Steve overriding concerns for his own safety. 

"Agent Barton is still in DC."

"Yeah, okay. Ah…yeah…J, just let Barnes in." Yep, he was probably letting his heart mess with his decisions here—letting an agitated Winter Soldier into his lab was definitely not one of his brightest ideas—but it seemed less painful than asking Steve for help. "J, get the armor ready, you know, just in case."

"Of course, sir," JARVIS said in a tone that suggested he was long-suffering. Perhaps he was since it was more than likely that he'd taken that safety precaution even before telling Tony he had a visitor.

"Tony?" Barnes asked in a quiet voice.

"Over here," Tony said, instinctively keeping a workbench between him and the world's most deadly assassin. "What can I do for you, Barnes?" 

"I just wanted to—" He winced and looked around as if he didn't quite know what he wanted to say. "I just wanted to apologize for offending you the other day."

Tony appreciated the fact that Bucky wasn't bringing up the subject of his apology, and then waved the words away. "It's fine. You didn't know." And then because no one was ever nice without wanting something from him, Tony added, "I'm still going to make your new arm. No need to fret."

"New arm?" Bucky asked, glancing at the metal stump that hung from his left shoulder. It was probably a ridiculously heavy drag on his shoulder and spine now that he didn't have a way to rest it using his lower arm and hand.

"Yeah, it's almost finished. Lighter, stronger. It will give you a better range of movement without the pain."

"Pain is irrelevant," Bucky said in an almost monotone voice. Even he seemed surprised by the words he'd said. "Ah…"

Tony decided the best way to deal with that, at least for now, was to ignore it. According to the test results he'd read, Bucky was likely to remember only bits and pieces of the horror of the last seventy years. The fact that Hydra had often wiped his short-term memory immediately after an assignment—well before a healthy human brain could rewrite the images into long-term memory—was likely to be a godsend. It might not save him from bouts of PTSD in the future (he had apparently recovered most of his memories of the war he and Steve had fought together) but at least his time with Hydra and everything he'd been forced to do should be mostly missing. 

"It's almost done," Tony repeated nonchalantly despite the fact that he'd worked on it nonstop since locking himself down here. "J, what day is it?"

"Wednesday evening, sir."

Okay, that wasn't too bad. Everything had started on movie night. That had been Thursday. So he'd only been mostly locked in his workshop for six days. That certainly wasn't his worst working binge in history, but it probably explained the smell. As if to remind him that he'd been ignoring the basics his stomach rumbled rather loudly.

"When was the last time you ate, Tony?" Bucky asked, his body language suggesting he wasn't going to be sidetracked from getting a straight answer.

"I keep food and, you know, snacks down here," Tony said. "And coffee." Coffee was a food group, right?

Bucky didn't seem impressed. "When was the last time you ate a proper meal, Tony?" he asked again, this time raising an eyebrow as if daring Tony to try and evade the real answer.

"Ah…J?"

The AI's answer was not what Barnes apparently wanted to hear.

"Come on," Bucky said, holding his arm out for Tony to take. "Let's get something for you to eat before you really do end up in the bed beside me."

Tony knew—absolutely fucking knew—that Bucky meant in the other hospital bed in the same room he'd been staying, but the words brought with them a way too appealing visual.

Yeah, just what he needed. Tony had already fucked up his heart by falling for one super soldier. It was just like him to start falling for the super soldier's super soldier as well.

Yeah, Tony was so fucked. Just so not in the good way. 

~*~

Steve woke with a start, nearly falling off the chair in his rush to wake. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but it'd been warm and quiet in Bucky's room and Steve hadn't actually slept more than a few minutes at a time since Loki's magical stunt had started all this six days ago.

Bucky had finally fallen into a restful sleep and Steve had accidentally followed.

He was still berating himself for failing to stay on guard when he realized Bucky's bed was empty. Panicked, he leaped to his feet, unsure where to start his search before he remembered Tony's AI.

"JARVIS, do you know where Bucky is?"

"Sergeant Barnes is currently in the communal kitchen cooking a meal with Sir."

"Oh," Steve said dumbly. That had been the very last answer he might have expected. "Is he…okay?" And then because the rest of that sentence finally sank in, he quickly override it with, "Is Tony okay?"

"Yes, Captain," JARVIS said in a calm tone. "Sergeant Barnes and Sir are both in good spirits and quite well."

It took a few moments of out-of-character dithering for Steve to finally decide that he needed to at least check on them both. He left the medical ward reluctantly and headed toward the elevator.

~*~

"No, seriously," Tony said, laughing easily as he chopped an onion into small pieces. "We were at least a half hour into the movie before I even realized I was wearing a dress."

Bucky grinned. "It sounds to me like you've had some practice with that sort of thing."

Tony winked at him, laughed softly, and then shook his head. "Not really," he admitted, "but it wasn't a completely terrible experience." Bucky barely knew the man, yet he felt certain that this was the real Tony Stark, not the flashy, fast-talking, I-don't-give-a-damn-what-anyone-thinks-of-me guy Bucky had met a few days ago.

"So that's how you found out about me?" Bucky asked, grimacing a little when the question altered the comfortable atmosphere in the room.

"Yeah," Tony said quietly. "I always thought the Winter Soldier was a ghost story. If we'd known it was you…" 

His words trailed away and Bucky could see how hopeless the sentiment truly was. According to the reports they'd been able to recover from Hydra, the Winter Soldier had been held in cryostasis in between missions, so even if they'd known it was Bucky, their chances of finding and rescuing him had been nearly zero. 

At the moment those reports were just words on paper for Bucky, but since some of his memories of his time as the Winter Soldier—a confusing jumble of images and snippets of memories with no context—were starting to resurface now that he was no longer being injected with a cocktail of drugs every few hours, he knew there was a chance they might return. 

A cowardly part of him didn't want to remember, but the serum that had kept Bucky alive while on ice had also been Hydra's biggest problem when trying to control him. They'd never truly managed to erase his long term memories, those of Steve and the commandos and the memories before that. But Bucky was surprisingly okay with the idea of having had the short term memories of his missions erased each time and never truly remembering what he'd done while under their control.

He'd rather embrace the chance he had to claim a future than wallow in despair for things he never would have chosen to do on his own. As far as Bucky was concerned it was far more important to concentrate on the "here and now." 

Trying not to let the fear of memories he might never learn overwhelm him, Bucky turned his mind to the more important things he'd learned since waking in Stark Tower. 

"Steve said you redesigned his uniform for him, made it…um…strong enough to stop a bullet without making it too heavy to wear."

"Yeah," Tony said, looking down at the tomatoes he was chopping as if it was no big deal. "It's just easier if we don't have to patch everyone up after every little fight."

"And that you're letting him and the other Avengers, and now me as well, live here rent free."

Tony shrugged. "I had the space."

"And you build and maintain all of their equipment and fund all the medical stuff."

Again Tony shrugged, suddenly very interested in the tomatoes he was cutting.

Bucky persisted, trying to make his point. "Steve also said you've pulled his ass out of danger so many times in the past year that he's lost count."

Tony didn't react at all that time, not even a shrug.

"Tony," Bucky said, moving close enough to notice that the man was swallowing hard and blinking rapidly. "Thank you for looking out for him when I couldn't."

The change in demeanor was instant and kind of terrifying. "Yeah, well, thanks to Hydra you're here now to take over. That man has been a pain in my ass since the day we met. I'm glad to hand him back."

Bucky rocked backward on his heels, stunned by the vehement outburst and more than a little tempted to defend his closest friend against Stark's spoiled brat of a son. But then Bucky remembered how much Tony really did for the Avengers, recalled everything Steve had told him about the man's generosity with both his money and his time. Steve had told him—with no small amount of awe in his voice—that somehow Tony even managed to continue to create and design technology for Stark Industries while also being a full-time Avenger.

"Hey," Bucky said, reaching for the man as he tried to leave the kitchen. "I don't know what I said wrong, Tony, but I'm real sorry I said it."

Tony shook his head. "It's nothing," he said, twisting in Bucky's grip until he was forced to let go or hurt Tony accidentally. "J, can you talk Barnes through the rest of the recipe?"

"Of course, sir," the AI said, "but it would be much easier for Sergeant Barnes if you were here to help him. He is still recovering from his ordeal, after all."

Tony tightened his jaw, scowled mutinously, and then eventually huffed out a quiet sigh.

"Fine," he said, glancing at the place where Bucky's left arm would have been, "but the moment we're done here I'm finishing that damn arm so I don't have another damaged superhero I have to worry about."

~*~

And if he'd had just a few more hours worth of sleep over the past six days he probably wouldn't have said any of that out loud. Tony plastered his "media" smile onto his face and tried to brazen it out, but the look in Bucky's eyes was more than Tony could take.

"Sorry," Tony said, wondering how the fuck he could have forgotten even for a moment that this man had been the Winter Soldier. Even without his memories or his arm to balance him he moved like a predator. 

"Tony," Bucky said, moving into his personal space as if he had a right to, "please explain to me what just happened." 

The press of a warm hand against his cheek had Tony gasping in surprise. It didn't stop him from leaning into the man's caress though. Tony had spent so much time in the past year pining for Steve that he'd ended up completely touch starved. And that was the only explanation for why he let Bucky wrap his arm around him and pull him into a soft kiss.

"But, you're with Steve," Tony mumbled as he tried to do the right thing and step away.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, sounding slightly incredulous. "Steve's not a queer."

"We use the term 'gay' now," Tony said, his brain firing in so many different directions it was a miracle he'd been able to talk at all, let alone correct Bucky's old-fashioned term with something more politically correct.

Bucky laughed softly. "He's not gay either," he said, emphasizing the new-to-him use of the word. 

"Actually," Steve said from right behind Tony, "a few things have changed since you knew me, Buck."

Bucky grinned, but didn't let go of Tony or step away. "How so?" he asked Steve as the man moved nearer and pressed his hard body up against Tony's spine. Bucky's smile grew even wider when Steve reached for Bucky's hips and pulled him closer so that Bucky was pressed against Tony's chest.

Holy fuck, clearly Tony was hallucinating. How the hell had he ended up as the filling in the middle of a super soldier sandwich? If this was real, he was suddenly very happy that he'd let Bucky bully him into having a quick shower before they'd come to the kitchen to make a meal. 

"What's changed?" Tony asked Steve, reiterating Bucky's question, unable to bear not knowing the answer. 

"Me," Steve said, simply. "I know that what I have in my arms right now is exactly what I want forever." Those softly whispered words tickled against Tony's ear, but this was no laughing matter. "And I'm not wasting another moment being too scared to ask for what I want."

"Both of us?" Tony asked, unable to fathom why he would be included in such an unexpected proposal.

"Yes, Tony," Steve said, the smile in his voice very obvious. "Both of my best guys, together, in a relationship with me and each other. Any objections?"

Tony gazed at Bucky waiting for the man to choose Steve and end this wonderful hallucination. Instead Bucky grinned, leaned in, and gave Tony the most deliciously filthy kiss. They were both panting by the time he pulled away.

"No objections," Bucky added with a wide, happy smirk.

~*~

Loki had been so busy altering his plans to include the newly recovered Winter Soldier, he'd completely lost track of what was happening between the Star Spangled man without a clue and his equally oblivious Metal Man.

Needing to check in, Loki quickly cast spells into the air so that he could track Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and James Barnes, and ended up with windows of them all in the same bedroom—a three-way view of a…three-way.

He stared at the moving pictures in front of him, his mouth dropping open when he realized they had found their own way to the happiness he'd been plotting for the three of them together.

With a sneer he closed the spells.

But not before he'd made certain the bed's legs collapsed underneath them first.

Stupid mortals. They were always ruining his best-laid plans.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed my idea of stress relief. 
> 
> I wrote this story during a rather exhausting time in my life. Poor Tony was on the receiving end of my frustration with the ridiculous amount of paperwork and red tape I had to deal with, but he got his happy ending eventually.
> 
> I removed a few parts that got a bit angsty (mainly Bucky remembering things that were definitely not funny) but plan to tidy them up a bit and post them as a separate short story. It'll basically be in the same setting with the same people, just a little more serious and a lot more heartbreaking, but it too will have a happy ending. 
> 
> Of course, Loki doesn't like to be thwarted—even when he's trying to help—so I'm almost certain there will be a silly sequel very soon as well. After all, Loki _always_ does what he wants…


End file.
